Red Carpets & White Lies

In a city known for its never-ending parties, Miami socialite Leigh Anatole White hosts the most extravagant party of them all. Her annual Charity Ball, a star-studded benefit for troubled teens, is the most highly anticipated event of the season, and Leigh pulls out all the stops to ensure it doesn’t disappoint.

This year—the tenth anniversary of the Ball—Leigh has decided to give Miami one last blowout before relinquishing her title as hostess. Suffice it to say, the pressure is on: this year’s Charity Ball simply must be the best yet. With help from her committee, a few close friends, a masterful personal assistant and her supportive husband, Leigh is poised to deliver. Even the dirty secrets and entanglements of her friends and pseudo-friends—the good-hearted, hard-drinking gossip queen Dixie Johnson; drag queen extraordinaire Diva Elaine Manchester; and bronzed, botoxed and backstabbing Katie Parker, to name a few—can’t slow her down.

When an influential art dealer shows up, offering to provide high-end artwork for the Charity Ball’s auction, Leigh is thrilled. This is just what the gala needs to set it apart from previous years’, and after all of Leigh’s hard work, it looks as though the last Charity Ball may just live up to the hype. But as always in the world of Miami’s rich and shameless, a scandal is never far off…and this one hits everyone close to home.

Mother, wife, philanthropist, author, television personality, political activist, and entrepreneur are all titles that can be claimed by Lea Black, a Texas native who moved to Miami in the late 1980s and quickly rose to the heights of Miami society. In addition to having played a prominent role on The Real Housewives of Miami, Lea also blogs regularly for outlets such as The Huffington Post and E! Online, has founded and co-founded several health and beauty lines, and hosts an annual gala that wrangles in Miami's considerable wealth and talent in order to raise money for charity. Lea is also president and CEO of a multi-brand company she created and founded, The World of Lea Black. She is married to renowned trial attorney Roy Black, with whom she has a thirteen-year-old son, RJ.