FACTBOX: Hillary Clinton faces colleagues in U.S. Senate

(Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York is expected to get a warm welcome on Tuesday when she visits the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a hearing on her nomination to be U.S. Secretary of State.

Clinton, a Democrat who has at times been a polarizing figure during her political career, has faced no opposition so far from Senate colleagues to her nomination by President-elect Barack Obama to be the top U.S. diplomat.

Here are some facts and biographical details about Clinton.

- Clinton, who is married to former President Bill Clinton, was first lady from 1993 to 2001. She headed the Clinton administration's failed effort to overhaul the U.S. health care system and drew criticism for not seeking enough public or congressional input and developing a plan that was considered too complicated.

- While in the White House she was drawn into several scandal investigations, but was never charged with wrongdoing in probes of the firing of White House travel office staff members and an Arkansas real estate loan made before the couple moved to the White House.

- Clinton defended her husband when allegations surfaced in 1998 of his extramarital affair with a White House intern and was angry when they were revealed to be true, but stood by him during his impeachment and subsequent acquittal in a Senate trial.

- Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York in 2000, the first time a first lady had run for public office. While Clinton has been a frequent target of Republican animosity, she won praise for building bridges with the other party in the Senate, visited conservative areas of upstate New York frequently and was easily re-elected in 2006 in a race that set up her run for the White House in 2008.

- Clinton won more than 18 million votes during a prolonged and close battle with Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, but eventually fell short and withdrew from the race in June 2008. She pledged her support for Obama in his campaign against Republican John McCain, delivering a high-profile convention speech on Obama's behalf and appearing on the campaign trail with him frequently.

- Clinton, a graduate of Yale Law School, was an accomplished lawyer. She worked in Washington in 1974 for the House of Representatives committee considering the impeachment of President Richard Nixon during Watergate and was named by a magazine in 1991 as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America.

- Clinton, 61, was born in Park Ridge, Illinois. She was a fan of conservative Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater during his losing 1964 campaign, but became a Democrat while attending Wellesley College. She met Bill Clinton while at Yale.

(Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by David Storey)