She looks like a model — she was a model and now runs a chic Manhattan dress shop — but she talks like a cross between a drill sergeant and a cheerleader.

“I want to run a professional meeting because we’re all grownups now and this is a support group for my … moms who have gotten it together!” Deborah Koenigsberger announced last week to 15 women at a Midtown shelter for battered women.

The women clapped and cheered. Although they no longer live at the shelter, Ms. Koenigsberger runs a support group for them because, well, no one else does. And doing what no one else does is Ms. Koenigsberger’s specialty.

“I met her at — was it the Halloween party in 2005?” one of the mothers tried to recall. “I met her at her Easter party,” another said. “My son was in a coma, and I just wished I was dead,” a third, Laura, recalling her days at the shelter, said. Alarmed administrators knew whom to call. In came the woman everyone calls “Miss Deborah.”

Miss Deborah — actually a Jamaican-born, NYU-educated, 47-year-old Mrs. and mother of two — is not a social worker. She doesn’t even like the system. “I believe in a helping hand — thank God there is a shelter — but I tell my moms, ‘It’s not your life. It’s a moment in your life when you’re this broke and this sad, but it doesn’t have to be the rest of your life.'”

Then, she works on making sure it isn’t.

“All right, who here remembers your short-term goal from last meeting?” Ms. Koenigsberger asked, as the women dug into their roasted chicken and cornbread. “What did you do toward that goal?”

“I enrolled in school and look at my ID!” Laura, the woman whose son is sick, said, to whoops of encouragement.

“I got my daughter into pre-K,” another said.

“I paid my bills,” another said.

“That’s big,” Miss Deborah said. “And I’ll tell you what else: You stayed out of the shelter system. I have way too many families that have mismanaged things, and they’re back, and it’s not fun. You know that.”

Often the only fun in the shelters, in fact, is the fun provided by Miss Deborah and the organization she began, Hearts of Gold (heartsofgold.org).

Ten years ago, as she was listening to Stevie Wonder sing “Reach out your arms and hug someone/Be it king or some homeless one,” Ms. Koenigsberger suddenly realized that’s exactly what she had to do. She marched over to a shelter, “and that’s when I found out there were kids there,” she said. “I said, ‘What do you do when it’s a child’s birthday?'”

The answer was unacceptable.

From throwing monthly birthday parties, she graduated to throwing holiday parties, and these just kept getting bigger. Now that she has “adopted” three shelters, she’s expecting 150 at next month’s Easter bash. Every child gets a bunny and a book and an Old Navy gift certificate for spring clothes — provided their mothers stay on track and keep coming to the meetings.

“I am not a handout …,” Miss Deborah explained later. “I give them the ultimatum: You go to parenting class and learn how to stop smacking your child around, or you don’t come to my meeting. I will not tolerate negativity. You get some therapy. And I will call and check if you’re going there.”

She does. She also checks to see if they need anything, and sends it right over. She lunches with her ladies to see how they’re doing and stops by to visit Laura’s son, who is still in the hospital. She is godmother to countless children, including twins Dijon and Diyonna, now both A students.

“I’m doing so many things now, and it was because of Miss Deborah,” the twins’ mother, Sheila, said. “She’s mine and my children’s guardian angel, because without her I never would have seen the light.”

Oh, and all this does take money. Miss Deborah solved that problem, too: She holds a fund-raising fashion show. The first year it was in her store, Noir et Blanc Bis on 23rd Street. Now it’s at the Puck Building. This fall it brought in $220,000.

Right now, that money’s going to camp scholarships. “It’s always good to try something new. Get out of your comfort zone!” Miss Deborah told the mothers as she handed out camp information packets. “Get off your tushies!”

Then all the children flooded in from the pizza party Miss Deborah had arranged for them in the room next door, and there was no more time to motivate. Miss Deborah was too busy lifting babies and admiring ponytails and patting the shy little boys desperately leaning against her.

“They’re your kids, but they’re my kids,” she said. Then she reached out her arms and hugged someone.