She never said anything that made headlines, like Amy Carter. She didn't get in minor trouble with the law, like the daughters of George W. Bush. Rather, she maintained a private persona as much as possible, politely declined to talk to the media, and survived it all with her reputation intact. Or, rather, with no reputation at all.
Born Feb. 27, 1980 in Little Rock, AK, Chelsea got her first taste of "fame once removed" hen her father Bill was elected governor of Arkansas. Nevertheless, after attending two magnet elementary schools, she went to Horace Mann Junior High School like a regular student.
That changed, of course, when Bill Clinton became President of the United States in 1992. Chelsea was enrolled in the private Sidwell Friends school, from which she graduated (and played on the varsity soccer team) and about all that was known about her was that she took ballet classes and was a vegetarian.
Chelsea finally met her public in 1996, when she played the role of the Favorite Aunt and the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Washington Ballet's production of "The Nutcracker." Later, she served on the Model United Nations.
Occasionally the butt of satire and jokes (Rush Limbaugh, after mentioning that there was a 'First Dog' in the White House, showed a photo of Chelsea), Chelsea couldn't completely escape the glare of the spotlight.
"In August 1998, a few days after President Clinton's address to the nation in which he admitted to an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky, the teenage Clinton was placed prominently between her mother and father as they walked towards the Marine One helicopter to take them on their family vacation.
"On February 5, 1999, just before the Senate's vote on impeachment, People magazine ran a cover story on Chelsea Clinton. The cover story irked the First Family, as well as the Secret Service."
That story generated the most mail in People Magazine history.
One thing that was readily apparent about Chelsea (whose Secret Service code name was "Energy") was her intellect. And when it came time to pick a college, she got as far away from Washington as she could, opting to attend Stanford. There, she majored first in chemistry (with some aspirations of becoming a doctor), then switched to history, writing her dissertation on the 1998 Belfast Agreement in Northern Island brokers by her famous father. She graduated in 2001 and went on to earn a master's at Oxford, where Bill was a Rhodes Scholar.
After college, Chelsea worked for several consulting firms in New York and campaigned for her mother Hilary when she ran first for the Senate from New York and then for President.
She is engaged to longtime boyfriend Edward Mezvinsky, the son of two members of Congress, and they have planned a wedding sometime in 2010
