How do you take off hydrogens in an alcohol compound to add a benzene ring?
I can’t quite make out the starting structure from your description, but it sounds like you need to oxidize your secondary alcohol to a ketone in order to then add phenyl grignard (phenyl magnesium bromide) into the carbonyl. This would give you a tertiary alcohol where one of the substituents is a phenyl. There are many reagents available to oxidize secondary alcohols to ketones. I’m not sure what level of organic chemistry you’re taking, so I’m not going to suggest a reagent in case I give you one that you’re not familiar with. You should be able to look up oxidations of alcohols to ketones pretty easily in a textbook.
