Two way DB encryption secure even from the Admin

Question

I have an interesting encryption problem at hand. I do not know if it can be solved but here goes:

A database is to contain sensitive user information. As such, the user

Answer 1

Can't be done.

In all cases, someone has to be able to recreate the key to decrypt it. Let's consider the options:

1. Key stored on server. Fails: administrator has access.
2. Key encrypted with user's password. Fails: user might forget it.

The solution is to relax the administrator having access restriction, and instead of impossible, you make it just very difficult. For example, if the data were encrypted with a key stored encrypted with the user's password, but that key were escrowed in some other system which can't be accessed in the normal course of events by the administrator (perhaps only another admin has access?) then you can still recover from a user forgetting their password (with intervention of whoever has access to escrowed keys), but the admin can't just download your database and read all the data.