I have JavaFX FXML projects with several external Jars. The project compiles and DEBUGs just fine.

But when I try to RUN the project. either inside the IDE, 
or at the command line from the "dist" subdirectory, 
the Jars that are project dependencies, that the build copied into the lib directory don't load up, and I receive ""JavaFX Launcher Error", "Exception while running Application"

RUNning the project inside the IDE results in a number of errors, leading up to (example): Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/slf4j/LoggerFactory
    at jfx1.SimpleController.initialize(SimpleController.java:36):

I'm fairly certain it's a classpath issue, related to JavaFX.
But hopeful that it's just lack of documentation and a step I've left out...
Existing documentation did not help and/or did not apply to my configuration.
I will be happy to write-up a page on this for documentation when I get it working.

To reproduce, here are steps taken:

1. Create a NEW Project->JavaFX->JavaFX FXML Application called "jfx1" (uses sample.fxml "Hello, World")

2. Right-click on Libraries->Add Jar/Folder and add the following Jars (source: slf4j.org ):

slf4j-api-1.7.5.jar     slf4j-simple-1.7.5.jar

3. Add the following lines to the beginning of SimpleController.java
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

Also add the following lines to initialize(URL url, ResourceBundle rb)
            Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SimpleController.class);
            logger.info("Hello World");

4. Edit manifest.mf

add the following line followed by a couple newlines
Class-Path: lib/slf4j-api-1.7.5.jar lib/slf4j-simple-1.7.5.jar
(I have also tried JavaFX-Class-Path: lib/slf4j-api-1.7.5.jar lib/slf4j-simple-1.7.5.jar)
I have also tried with NO changes to manifest.mf

5. Clean and Build project (no problems - jars copied to dist and lib folders )
6. Debug project (no problems - UI starts up, logger sends "hello world" to debug)
7. Attempt to Run project, and received a number of errors leading up to:
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/slf4j/LoggerFactory
    at jfx1.SimpleController.initialize(SimpleController.java:36):
(Line 36 corresponds to the first line added where we getLogger)

8. Attempt to run jar from command line in "dist" directory.. 

Received dialog: "JavaFX Launcher Error", "Exception while running Application"

Running Java -jar jfx1.jar -cp lib/* -Djavafx.verbose=true
results in the same errors as seen in the IDE

Environment: NetBeans IDE Dev (Build 201307192300) Windows 7 32-bit. 
Can test in Linux or Win 8 if need be.