[2][3] Rense also transformed the cooking magazine Bon Appétit into its modern format, was editor-in-chief of GEO, and wrote a mystery novel, Manor House (Doubleday, 1997).

[8] By 1940, the family was living at 1014 Douglas Avenue in Des Moines, the residence of her maternal grandmother, Martha Smith; her father then was working as a spinner in a wool mill.

[13] After leaving Water World she wrote a how-to beauty book and a novel, in addition to articles for Cosmopolitan, and worked in publicity and advertising.

She held that position until 2010, having transformed the magazine, which was founded in 1920 as a trade journal, into "a bible for the design world and increasing its circulation to more than 850,000 from 50,000 during her tenure".

[18] By her third marriage to Arthur F. Rense (1916–1990), a sports journalist for the Los Angeles Daily News and the director of public relations for Howard Hughes's Summa Corporation,[2][19] she had three stepsons.