A Deeper
EMPATHY
Denise Henning was a great lawyer
before cancer; now she’s better
BY ALLIE JOHNSON PHOTOGRAPHY BY DON IPOCK
R. DENISE HENNING · FOUNDER, THE HENNING LAW FIRM · PERSONAL INJURY, CONSUMER LAW · MISSOURI & KANSAS SUPER LAWYERS: 2005–2011; TOP 10: 2011; TOP 100: 2008–2011; TOP 50 WOMEN: 2006–2011
It was supposed to be a routine mammogram.
The year was 2004, and Kansas City trial
lawyer Denise Henning, then 38 and already
known as a strong fighter for plaintiffs in
transportation and highway safety cases, went in
for her first one. “My doctor had just said, ‘You’re
getting older and you need to do this,’ so I went in
not expecting anything,” recalls Henning. “Then
the radiologist came in and said, ‘I’m 99 percent
sure you have breast cancer.’”
The news sent Henning reeling—and
threatened to derail the dream life and career
she had been building. She was happily married
to her high school sweetheart, Tim, whom she
had met while growing up in a small town in
Nebraska, where she’d played basketball, worked
at a burger-and-ice-cream stand and was
valedictorian of her senior class.
She’d gone to college (Doane), then to law
school (University of Illinois), and the couple
had moved to Missouri when Denise landed
a clerkship with Judge Patricia Breckenridge,
then on the Missouri Court of Appeals, and
now a Missouri Supreme Court justice. Judge
Breckenridge became a mentor as Henning
moved on in her career, first joining a Kansas
City law firm that did both defense and plaintiff’s
work, then departing to co-found a firm devoted
to what had become her dream: representing
people who’d been injured.
