  The leading particle effect in charm hadroproduction is an enhancement of the
cross section for a charmed hadron D in the forward direction of the beam when
the beam hadron has a valence parton in common with the D. The large D+/D-
asymmetry observed by the E791 experiment is an example of this phenomenon. We
show that the heavy-quark recombination mechanism provides an economical
explanation for this effect. In particular, the D+/D- asymmetry can be fit
reasonably well using a single parameter whose value is consistent with a
recent determination from charm photoproduction.
