Financier Gets Nod as One of 2 Women Admitted to Augusta National

For the first time in its 80-year history, the Augusta National Golf Club is admitting two women into its green-jacketed ranks.

One of them is Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state. The other is Darla Moore, who broke through the top ranks of corporate bankruptcy circles in her career as a financier.

A native of the tiny town of Lake City, S.C., Ms. Moore began her career at Chemical Bank, specializing in corporate restructuring. She later earned a reputation as the “Queen of the DIP,” according to Fortune magazine, lending money to bankrupt companies to keep them alive during their Chapter 11 cases.

The work led Ms. Moore to become the highest paid woman in the industry, as well as the first woman to be featured on Fortune's cover.

Her devotion to the business of finance was so deep, apparently, that she said she was charmed when her future husband, the investor Richard Rainwater, told her, “I view you like an equity investment.”

In 1994, she left banking to become the chief executive of her husband's firm, and continuing her tough-talking ways in a new realm. According to a 1997 profile, she was unafraid of challenging T. Boone Pickens at the energy company he founded, Mesa Petroleum. And she pushed for the ouster of Rick Scott - a friend of her husband's - from the hospital operator Columbia/HCA amid an investigation into whether the company was overcharging Medicare and Medicaid.

That toughness even extended to dealing with her husband. From a Fortune article published last year:

In his will, Rainwater planned to give the vast majority of his fortune to his personal charitable foundation; there was no provision for his wife. So one day Moore bluntly asked him to resolve this financial uncertainty. And he did, on the spot. Grabbing a sheet of paper, he tore it into five pieces and scrawled a different number on each. Into a baseball cap (Texas Rangers, of course) went the scraps. Moore picked one from the hat. She won't say what she actually picked, but clearly the queen of financial workouts did not earn that reputation for nothing. Moore ended up with “a nice number,” she says - explaining that, after some further negotiation, Rainwater bestowed upon her the most valuable scrap, worth about $60 million.

Such is Ms. Moore's reputation and wealth that the University of South Carolina renamed its business school after her, following a $25 million donation.