Huma Abedin is the traveling chief of staff for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to an Indian father and Pakistani mother. When she was two-years-old, the family moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

She returned to the United States to study at George Washington University. In 1996, while still a student, Abedin interned in the White House, as an assistant to then first lady Hillary Clinton.

Congressman Anthony Weiner confirmed on May 28, 2008, that he has been dating Abedin.

When Weiner was asked why he would be traveling to Puerto Rico with the Clinton Campaign, he replied "I'm doing a lot, but it's largely because I'm dating Huma."

There are persistent, unsubstantiated rumors that Abedin is/was involved in a lesbian affair with Hillary Clinton.

The rumors first began in mid-2007, following a Village Voice column by Michael Musto and a report in the Rupert Murdoch-owned London Times. There has been renewed interest following the allegations in The New York Times of an affair between Republican presidential candidate John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

On February 21, 2008, the day after the Iseman/McCain story broke, the name "Huma Abedin" appeared high in Google Trends, a system for tracking popular or buzzy search terms.

It has been suggested that the two terms showing up simultaneously in Google Trends was not a coincidence, but an intentional distraction or counterpoint from the Iseman story.