The central character in the show is Stephanie Harper, a rich heiress after her father passes away. As the series starts she has been divorced twice and is marrying Greg Marsden a champion tennis player several years her junior. Everyone except Stephanie can see that he is no good. He has been having an affair with Stephanie's best friend, Jilly Stewart. Whilst on their honeymoon at her family home Eden, Greg pushes Stephanie into a crocodile infested river. Everyone thinks she has perished but luckily she has escaped and is given a new body, face and name by plastic surgeon Dr Dan Marshall. She returns to Sydney as a changed woman, Tara Welles. There she discovers her two children, Dennis and Sarah, going to different boarding schools, and Greg and Jilly carrying on their affair in Stephanie's own mansion in town--but she does not let any of those people see her, nor get in touch with Bill McMaster, the EVP of the mining company she inherited. As this episode ends, she dresses as a fashion plate and walks boldly into the offices of a casting agency, challenging them to get her onto the cover of Vogue in six months.

Six months to the day after she boldly walked into the Joanna Randell Casting Agency, she is now Vogue's cover-girl sensation and has a very successful modeling career. Now she entices Greg Marsden, whom she meets at a charity match, to start dating her. But at the same time, Dan Marshall, in Sydney for a medical conference, has looked up his former patient and renewed their acquaintance. But Stephanie refuses Dan's advances and tells him (falsely) that she does not love him. For she has now enticed Greg Marsden to go to Eden with her--alone. Except that Stephanie calls Jilly and tells her shortly before her aeroplane leaves....

Dan Marshall tracks down Stephanie, first by visiting Joanna Randell unannounced, then by visiting the Sydney house where he meets the two children, Sarah and Dennis. Stephanie, meanwhile, carefully drives Greg and Jilly to distraction until at last Greg tries to kill Jilly. Stephanie then reveals herself to them both. Greg tries at once to kill Stephanie, first by setting fire to a room in the main house at Eden, then in a swimming pool. But Jilly shoots him in the arm, making him bleed profusely. He then attempts to flee in an aeroplane. It crashes and he is killed. The next day the police arrive and arrest Jilly. The day following, another aeroplane lands--carrying Sarah, Dennis, and Dan.