Thanks for uploading the raw file Derek. I can see the problem now. Like you said, it really is a big crop. In fact, it is a 100% crop.
NOT MY IMAGE - DerekL Burnet - 1 crop by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
On top of this, the capture was exposed, very nicely, for the whole image, but this leaves the moth very dark, so it needs hefty shadow lifting to get to see the detail of the fur. And it is ISO 400, which at 100% has significant noise, on top of which is added the noise of the shadow lifting.
It is IMO a very difficult image (crop) to handle.
Applying Lightroom noise reduction, even with masking, killed the detail. I tried two, rather more extreme approaches.
The first approach involved selective operations in Lightroom. I first applied noise reduction globally on the image (which killed the detail). I then painted this area with the Adjustment Brush and applied 100% negative noise - this removes the noise reduction in the painted area.
NOT MY IMAGE - DerekL Burnet - 2 negative NR painted area by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
I made various adjustments as shown below, including raising the Exposure and Shadows, and applying global sharpening.
NOT MY IMAGE - DerekL Burnet - 4 Selective Lightroom, global Lightroom adjustments IMG_8850 LR by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
I then wanted to get a bit more texture showing in the fur and wings, so I painted that area and applied additional sharpening to it.
NOT MY IMAGE - DerekL Burnet - 3 extra sharpness painted area by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
This was the end result.
NOT MY IMAGE - DerekL Burnet - 5 Selective Lightroom operations IMG_8850 LR by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
The other approach I tried was to tackle the noise first by applying DXO Prime raw noise reduction to the raw file. This produced a noise-reduced DNG file that I then processed in Lightroom.
In this case I only made global adjustments in Lightroom. (Which means this is not a fair like for like comparison as to which is best as between the two techniques. The DXO version is at a disadvantage as it only uses global adjustments. Obviously the two techniques could be combined.)
NOT MY IMAGE - DerekL Burnet - 6 DXO Prime, global Lightroom adjustments IMG_8850 LR by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
This included a bit more sharpening than with the previous technique. That was possible because the whole image, including the moth, had had noise reduction, so it could take more sharpening without turning nasty. This version had no luminance noise reduction, but I forgot to turn off the Colour noise reduction. I don't think this would have made much difference.
This was the resulting image.
NOT MY IMAGE - DerekL Burnet -7 DXO Prime NR then Lightroom global IMG_8850_DxO LR by
gardenersassistant, on Flickr
Not a great result in either case I'm afraid, but hopefully this was interesting in terms of potential techniques to consider. And perhaps someone else can produce a better result. There may well be more effective techniques than I have used. And also, tastes differ quite markedly as to what people like to see. I go in for rather low key colours and contrast for example, and I think most people prefer their images to have greater visual impact.