Born to a famous mother, Marcia Hines, when Marcia was just 16, Deni lived a very different first few years to your average youngster.
Marcia had just arrived in Australia to work on a production of Hair when she realised she was six months pregnant to her boyfriend back home in Boston.
Although Deni knew her father, he didn’t play an active part in her upbringing, and Deni instead found a second parent in her grandmother, Esme, whom she lived with in Jamaica when she was small.
"I won't say my mother was a saint, but I think some people just are good mothers, and I was really blessed to a great mother," Marcia told The Australian Women’s Weekly of her mother.
"Deni had two parents; her gran and me."
Having grown up around music, it’s no surprise Deni began to follow her own music career once she was old enough. In the early 90’s, Deni worked as a back-up vocalist for the likes of Kylie Minogue, Jimmy Barnes and Peter Blakely before she was approached by the band Rockmelons, who offered her work singing vocals on their songs.
From these recordings, Deni went on to star as Mary Magdalene in the stage show Jesus Christ Superstar, and her rising star was noticed by none other than INXS, one of Australia’s most popular bands to date.
Recording Not Enough Time with them in 1992, Marcia met the band’s guitarist and saxophonist, Kirk Pengilly, who would become her first husband a year later.
Reflecting on the marriage in 2007, Deni said it wasn’t something she’d do again.
“I was in my 20s when I got married and my best piece of advice is not to get married in your 20s,” she told Woman’s Day.
“You change so much. I know that now that I’m 36!”
Deni and Kirk’s marriage only lasted 10 months, dissolving in 1995.
Deni’s second marriage was less high-profile – she married British record producer Dennis Charles, whom she met while living in London.
Not much is known about her second brief marriage, as it was her third marriage that would turn out to be ‘the one’.
Speaking of Daniel Moses, her current husband, in 2012, Deni confirmed he was the one she’d been looking for.
“If you’d have told me a couple of years ago that I’d fall for a slightly balding finance guy, I’d have laughed at you,” she told New Idea.
“This man is the love of my life.”
Although Deni was in her early 40s at the time, and still hoped she might be able to have a baby.
“I plan to be pregnant by the end of the year, but Daniel doesn’t know that yet,” she said not long after she’d met Daniel.
The pair suffered a miscarriage before their wedding, in September of 2012. Although it’s believed the pair continued to try, they weren’t able to have a baby.
But after 10 years together, the pair still seem very much in love, and have had a great time living as a married couple.
They resided in Bangkok for two years, only returning to Australia in 2019 so that Deni could join the musical production of Rock of Ages, playing the role of Justice Charlier. After the show, she was due in Japan within weeks to perform.
“I’m living well,” she said of her life at the time.
“Because we move around the world, we don’t own a car, and it’s fairly cheap to rent one there,” she said of her life in Thailand.
Since her work in theatre, Deni has resumed her life in Thailand with Daniel by her side.
“Mr & Mrs Moses #10” she captioned a recent selfie of the pair, likely referencing the decade they have spent as a couple.
Their 10th wedding anniversary is still a year off.
Given border closures among the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s probably been quite difficult for Marcia and Deni to see each other.
However, Deni recently travelled home to film Dancing With The Stars: All Stars, which will air on Channel Seven this year.
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