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The daughter of acerbic comedienne Joan Rivers and her manager, Edgar Rosenberg, Melissa Rivers (born January 20th, 1968) grew up in the shadow of show business, watching from the wings as her famous mom perfected comedy routines at locales such as Caesar's Palace and the Golden Nugget. Raised in Beverly Hills, CA, Melissa received an Ivy League education, attending Penn after high school. Her father's 1987 suicide caused a deep-seated mother-daughter riff, though not estrangement per se. Meanwhile, Melissa established herself as one of the premier entertainment commentators on cable television -- in a triple role as a Rona Barrett-style gossip maven on the Hangin' with MTV segments, an MTV spring break emcee, and, in time, a broadcast journalist of youth-oriented material for both MTV and CBS This Morning. By the early '90s, Melissa and Joan mended fences and healed wounds -- an achievement reflected in the pair's joint professional accomplishments, when they began famously patrolling the pre-show red carpet together on nationally televised awards programs, and interviewing celebrities. The mother and daughter portrayed themselves in the 1994 celebrity docudrama Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story. In the summer of 2007, Melissa began parlaying her awards-show experience into Internet work when she launched her own blog commenting on the latest in entertainment and fashion, with a strong emphasis on the Emmys. She was a contestant on the 8th season of The Apprentice in 2010, and a key participate in Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, a documentary profiling her mother.