Halle Berry learned a painful lesson when her three-year marrriage to baseball slugger David Justice collapsed in 1996 with a temporary restraining order against him—and no restraint by the media. Asked in September about her romance with R&B singer Eric Benet, she replied, "I am going to be private from now on [about] my love life."

She has kept her word. In December a spokeswoman for the actress, 33, confirmed that Berry and Benet, 32, had in fact gotten engaged; according to a relative, the singer proposed on Aug. 14 at the Cleveland premiere of Berry's HBO movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. The actress, who will star in next summer's feature X-Men, first met the Milwaukee-bred Benet, whose album A Day in the Life has gone gold, at one of his concerts in 1997. Since he popped the question, notes a friend, Berry "is positively glowing."

Benet isn't looking too bad himself, after a long, sad stretch. Six years ago, his girlfriend Tami Stauff, the mother of his daughter India, 8, died in a car crash. Benet stopped dating, says musician pal Demonte Posey: "He was holding out for the right situation." Now that he has met Ms. Right, the pair are shopping for a home in L.A. They might not leave it much: Berry and Benet love to "watch movies and hang around the house," says Posey, who adds that India, who will live with the couple, already calls Berry "Mom." "They do lots of girlie, mommy-daughter things together, like shopping," says Posey. "It's a good situation for everybody. They're gonna make it."