Dawn Richard, the singer expected to take the stand as a witness at the Sean Combs trial after Casandra Ventura, was part of two of Mr. Combs’s best-known acts over the last two decades. She was in the R&B girl group Danity Kane, familiar to viewers of his MTV reality show “Making the Band,” and a trio called Diddy — Dirty Money.
And like Ms. Ventura, she has accused Mr. Combs of misconduct during her time with him, alleging in a lawsuit filed last year that he threatened her, groped her and would fly into “frenzied, unpredictable rages” while he oversaw her career. In response to that suit, a lawyer for Mr. Combs said in a statement that Ms. Richard had “manufactured a series of false claims all in the hopes of trying to get a payday.”
Danity Kane was assembled by Mr. Combs during the third iteration of “Making the Band,” which began in 2005. On the show, 11 finalists were winnowed down to a final team of five, their name inspired by a superhero character that Ms. Richard had drawn.
Ms. Richard, now 41, grew up in New Orleans, and she was the subject of the premiere episode of the show’s third season, as the group visited her hometown and surveyed the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. That season ended with the quintet filming a video for its debut single, “Show Stopper,” which reached No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
Danity Kane opened for Christina Aguilera on tour and released two albums before going on a hiatus in 2009. Then, Ms. Richard remained in Mr. Combs’s musical tent as part of Diddy — Dirty Money, a trio that also featured Mr. Combs as well as another singer, Kalenna Harper.
After one album, Mr. Combs disbanded the trio — over email — but Danity Kane reunited, releasing a third and final album in 2014. After another break, Danity Kane was active again, from 2018 to 2020.
In recent years, Ms. Richard — whose surname is pronounced “rih-SHARD” — has continued with her solo career, which has veered from the pop familiar to fans of Danity Kane and into more eclectic, even experimental areas. She has released two albums on the independent label Merge, which is best known for working with cerebral indie acts like Arcade Fire and the Magnetic Fields. Last year, she released “Quiet in a World Full of Noise,” her second collaboration with the composer Spencer Zahn.
“Drawing upon her own familial trauma — including a beloved cousin’s killing and her father’s cancer diagnosis — Richard melds the stylings of jazz, R&B and spoken-word poetry to deliver some of her most arresting lyricism yet,” the New York Times pop music critic Lindsay Zoladz wrote of the LP.
Her solo work has drawn critical notice, but in an interview with The Times in 2021, upon the release of her album “Second Line,” she complained that the praise seemed to downgrade her previous work.
“It made me feel like maybe Danity Kane was a joke,” Ms. Richard said in the interview. “Like everything that I had done before had been seen as some bubble gum thing, and now I’m a legitimate artist,” she added. “I was mind boggled by that because I hadn’t changed anything, I just literally got an opportunity to write more.”
In her lawsuit, Ms. Richard detailed a litany of complaints from her time working with Mr. Combs, alleging a culture in which her boss would order her to strip down to her underwear, smack her behind, throw objects such as laptops and food, and at times fail to pay her for her work.
On Thursday, prosecutors in Mr. Combs’s trial told the judge that Ms. Richard was one of the witnesses they expected to call to the stand once Ms. Ventura’s testimony finishes. The government — and the judge — have pushed for Ms. Ventura’s testimony to wrap on Friday afternoon.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years.
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