Denny Mendez

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Denny Mendez

Denny Mendez after winning the 1996 Miss Italy pageant

Denny Mendez (born on July 20, 1978 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) was a former beauty queen turned model who once represented Italy in the 1997 Miss Universe pageant.

A native of the Dominican Republic, Mendez relocated to Montecatini, Italy as a very young child with her mother in search of a better life. Many of Mendez's aunts had relocated to Italy and had married Italian citizens, and after divorcing Denny's biological father, she relocated to Italy and married an Italian man whom she met while he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic. [1] Mendez, who had no formal training as a model was studying to become a tourist guide prior to enrolling in the pageant.

Her election as Miss Italia on September 7, 1996 in the Italian town of Salsomaggiore caused a minor scandal throughout that nation. It was the first time that a woman of non-Italian ancestry was elected to represent the country in an international beauty pageant and some xenophobic Italian citizens saw it as a wake-up call for Italy to close its borders to further immigration. Two members of the judging panel were suspended for saying that a black woman could not represent Italian beauty. The news of the first black Miss Italy was carried to millions overseas via the popular African-American periodical, Jet Magazine. The author of the article wrote:

“Denny Mendez . . . born in the Dominican Republic to a naturalized Italian mother and an Italian [step]father, was named Miss Italy after receiving nine million telephone votes from the television audience.” Nine million Italians voted to shatter the prism of race, just by watching a TV beauty pageant and phoning in their votes! Beauty is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder, and the eyes of the world today are quite capable of seeing past skin color. The Italian people’s choice was Denny Mendez, notwithstanding the objections of a pageant official who said, “A black girl can’t be Miss Italy. It’s not in the rules.”[2]

Surprisingly with all the scandal surrounding her election, Denny was selected as one of the 10 semifinalists in the 1997 Miss Universe contests. Although she did not win the top prize in that pageant (Miss USA Brook Mahealani Lee was the winner of the pageant, which was held in Miami Beach, Florida on May 16, 1997), the publicity from the pageant helped her land modeling jobs among many of Europe's leading fashion houses and magazines.

Today, Mendez is a popular television personality in Italy. She remains very active in the modeling world and has become a budding actress. Besides several theatrical productions, she has guest starred on many Italian sitcoms, dramas, and feature films, she also had a small role in the film Ocean's Twelve starring George Clooney and Matt Damon. Mendez is fluent in Italian and has working knowledge of both English and Spanish.