WASHINGTON — The liaison between Paul Wolfowitz, a Jewish American foreign policy hawk, and Shah Riza, an Arab feminist, has always raised eyebrows in Washington’s diplomatic circles.

But for all the surface differences, they have much in common. Both come from robust academic backgrounds. Ms. Riza, who is in her early 50s, studied at the London School of Economics in the 1970s.

She took a master’s degree at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, where she met her future husband, Bulent Ali Riza, a Turkish Cypriot who became the territory’s representative in Washington. They have one son.

Having grown up in the confines of Arab society, friends said she reveled in the freedoms offered by Britain and developed a love of intellectual debates around the dinner table.

Diarists in the American capital have noted that she and Mr. Wolfowitz, who have been romantically linked for six years, are rarely seen in public and favor entertaining at home.

Mr. Wolfowitz, 63, known as “Wolfie” by President Bush, was dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington for eight years, becoming a driving force in the neoconservative movement in the 1990s and a staunch defender of Israel. In 2000, he was appointed deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, the then-secretary of defense.

He and Ms. Riza shared a passion for bringing democracy to the Middle East. Shortly before Mr. Wolfowitz’s appointment, Mr. Ali Riza said his ex-wife began “talking to Paul” — whom he also knew — about reform in the Middle East. A New Yorker columnist noted that she was an “influence” on the deputy defense secretary.

Soon after arriving in Washington, Ms. Riza started working for the Iraq Foundation, set up by expatriates to remove Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War, which Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the decade advocating. Joining the World Bank in 1997, her jobs included senior gender specialist with a special interest in the Middle East.

Mr. Wolfowitz may be uncompromising on foreign policy, but as ambassador to Indonesia in the 1980s and as World Bank chief he has shown an understanding of poverty and of the need to aid developing countries. In the 1960s he marched alongside Martin Luther King.

It has often been said that Mr. Wolfowitz is a brilliant thinker and a terrible manager. His defenders say the current crisis smacks not of nepotism but poor administration and trying too hard to ensure someone he cared for was properly compensated.