When Star Jones took the microphone for the paddle raise, the gifts on offer were not trips or jewels. A pledge of $1,000 or more came with a Corazon de Fer canvas by the artist Fer Da Silva. At $10,000, the canvas became an original heart sculpture. The room at Cipriani Wall Street gave more than $340,000 before she set the microphone down.
That was the arithmetic of the 28th Annual Angel Ball, held Monday, October 19, which raised $3 million for Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation for Cancer Research. Denise Rich hosted with her daughters, Daniella Rich Kilstock and Ilona Rich Schachter, and the evening honored Lynda Carter, Nicola Verses and Dionne Warwick. The money funds early-career scientists working on less toxic treatments for leukemia, lymphoma and related blood cancers, the research the foundation has paid for since 1996.
Carter was honored for her advocacy on behalf of blood cancer research. Verses, an entrepreneur, was recognized for her charitable work. Warwick, a six-time Grammy Award winner, rounded out a class of honorees the foundation had announced in September.
Deborah Cox, a Grammy and Tony Award nominee, worked the night from both sides of the program. As emcee she ran the evening, and midway through it she stepped to the microphone as a singer, performing Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All.” Taylor Dayne and Shaggy followed with sets of their own, and DJ M.O.S. and DJ Kiss kept the floor full after dinner. Dr. Stephen D. Nimer, one of the physicians whose field the foundation funds, made a special appearance during the program.
The night’s center was not a performance. Kelly Leach, a New York mother, told the room about her husband, Todd Day, who died in October 2024 of complications from treatment for secondary lymphoma. The couple had been in fertility treatment when he was diagnosed again. After his death, Leach went forward with their plan to become parents, and she gave birth to their daughter, Chloé, nearly a year later. She now campaigns for cancer therapies that do less damage to the patients they are meant to save, which is the precise problem the foundation’s grants exist to solve.
Seth Herzog, the resident comedian on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” led the live auction. Bidders competed for a journey through Peru with Belmond, jewelry by Lorraine Schwartz, an all-inclusive stay for four at Four Seasons Resort Naviva in Mexico and a seven-day program at the Lucia Magnani Health Clinic in Italy. An online auction continued after the ball, with a table for four at Rao’s among the lots. Kathy Hilton served as dinner chair, and Elizabeth Elting as honorary chair.
The guest list mixed the foundation’s longtime supporters with the city’s social regulars: Alec and Hilaria Baldwin, Carol Alt, Erin Lichy, Melissa and Joe Gorga, Sandra Lee, Tiki Barber, Simone I. Smith, Peter Thomas Roth and Laura Geller. Guests went home with Fabletics gift bags stocked by Valmont, Peter Thomas Roth and Grande Cosmetics. Lorraine Schwartz, L’AGENCE, Valmont and Four Seasons Naviva led the sponsors, with Armand de Brignac and Tito’s Handmade Vodka pouring.
Rich founded the foundation in memory of her daughter Gabrielle Rich Aouad, who died of acute myelogenous leukemia at 27. Thirty years on, the foundation has awarded more than $47 million in grants. This year’s ball matched the $3 million the 27th Angel Ball raised a year ago, and when the foundation announced the figure, it used a careful phrase: $3 million, and counting.
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