A truly inspirational role model, billionaire Oprah Winfrey has battled through grinding poverty and a troubled childhood to become the most powerful woman in TV and a shining example of the American Dream. Today, the media mogul is worth a stunning $2.6 billion (£2bn). Read on to discover more about Oprah Winfrey's incredible rags-to-riches journey. All dollar amounts are US dollars.
The future media mogul was born on January 29, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to a single teenage mother, Vernita Lee. She was named Orpah after a biblical figure in the Old Testament Book of Ruth. Orpah's estranged father, Vernon Winfrey, was in the US Army at the time.
Not long after she was born Orpah was left with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee, in Mississippi as her mother headed north to find work in Wisconsin. The little girl spent the first six years of her life living with Grandma in abject rural poverty.
When she was a baby family and friends frequently misspelt Orpah as Oprah, and the name stuck. Super-bright from the get-go, little Oprah was taught to read by her grandmother at the age of three, and the talkative child earned the nickname "The Preacher" for her talents reciting bible verses.
Oprah returned to her mother's home a year later and life got even harder. From the age of nine she was sexually abused by several family members and neglected by her mother. Overwhelmed by all the trauma, Oprah ran away from home not long after her 13th birthday.
Strict yet nurturing, Vernon imposed a curfew and banned his daughter from hanging out with boys. Oprah soon flourished in this disciplined environment and became an honours student, shining at school and bagging straight As. Moving back in with her father "changed the course of my life," she told the Washington Post.
Oprah was the star of East Nashville High's speech team. After winning an oratory competition, she was offered a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, and graduated from the college in 1973 with a degree in speech and the performing arts.
Oprah would get emotional reading heart-wrenching news stories, and her bosses at the TV station felt her warm, down-to-earth persona would be better suited to a talk show. In 1978, they transferred the chatty newsreader to a talk show called People Are Talking, which she co-hosted with Richard Sher.
In her element, Oprah excelled in her new role, which finally allowed her personality to shine through. By the early 1980s the rookie talk show host was riding high, and caught the attention of network executives looking for a bubbly, engaging host to anchor the station's ailing morning talk show, AM Chicago. Oprah sent in an audition tape and got the job.
The first episode aired on January 2 1984 and Oprah didn't waste any time working her magic. In the space of a few months, Chicago AM went from being the city's lowest-rated talk show to its highest. It's around this time that Oprah would have made her first $1 million (£765.7m).
Acting on advice from her friend, the late film critic Roger Ebert, Oprah signed a syndication deal with King World Productions. Chicago AM was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show and broadcast across America from September 8 1986. The confessional, no-holds-barred style of the show and Oprah's celebrity exclusives were a huge hit with the American public.
That same year, Oprah made her critically acclaimed film debut in Steven Spielberg's tear-jerker The Color Purple as the strong-willed Sofia, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Oprah also got together with her long-time partner, Stedman Graham, in 1986.
Oprah also set up her very own production company in 1986, making her the first black woman to own a major US studio. She christened the firm Harpo, which is Oprah spelt backwards and the name of her character Sofia's son in The Color Purple.
In 1987 The Oprah Winfrey Show had replaced Donahue as America's most-watched daytime talk show and won an Emmy, the first of many. By 1988 the syndication cash was rolling in and Oprah's income jumped to a massive $30 million (£23m) after she assumed full ownership of the show.
The Oprah Winfrey Show went from strength to strength in the early 1990s, pulling in bumper advertising revenues while featuring less sensational subject matter and more shows devoted to self-improvement and spirituality. By 1995 Oprah's net worth had skyrocketed to $340 million (£260.2m), and she replaced Bill Cosby as the only Black American on the Forbes 400 list.
Oprah founded her eponymous book club and Favorite Things segment in 1996, ushering in the so-called Oprah Effect: books and products that appeared on the show became overnight best-sellers, a testament to Oprah's powerful influence over the American public. Closing out the decade, she received the Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement award in 1998.
The new millennium held plenty of promise for the Oprah. In 2000 she launched her ridiculously successful monthly print magazine O, The Oprah Magazine, which Fortune described as the most successful start-up ever in the publishing industry.
A year later Oprah bought a 42-acre estate in Montecito, California, for $50 million (£38.2m). Naming it The Promised Land, the estate has been Oprah's principal residence ever since. The media magnate has also bought homes in Florida, Colorado and Hawaii.
With her popularity at an all-time high Oprah's wealth went through the roof in the early 2000s. In 2004 the undisputed Queen of All Media was listed by Forbes as the world's only black billionaire and the first black female billionaire in history.
It's no suprise that only a couple years later, in 2006, Oprah became America's highest-paid TV entertainer. Raking in an estimated $260 million (£199m) and beat out Simon Cowell. That same year she also signed a $55 million (£42m) contract with XM Satellite radio to create Oprah Radio.
Fulfilling a long-held dream she founded OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network in 2008. "I always felt my show was just the beginning of what the future could hold," she explained in a press release. The network actually spelled the end for The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah retired the show in its 25th season to enable her to focus on her network. The final episode aired on 25 May 2011, pulling in 16.4 million viewers.
OWN, which launched in 2011, began to turn a profit in 2013 on the back of increasing viewership. That same year, Oprah was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and starred in Lee Daniels' The Butler, for which she was nominated for several awards.
In 2014 Oprah appeared in and co-produced Ava DuVernay's Selma and was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as executive producer. The following year, she paid $43.5 million (£33m) for a 10% stake in Weight Watchers and the company's stock price surged as a result.
Oprah is also a bit of an art buff. In 2016 she sold a Gustav Klimt painting called Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II for a staggering $150 million (£114.8m), a reported profit of $62.1 million (£47.5m) on what she paid for it – showing she's a canny investor too. The painting had originally been looted by the Nazis in World War II.
Returning to her media mogul roots, Oprah signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+ in 2018 to create original content exclusively for the streaming giant. She's since released shows like Oprah’s Book Club, which was inspired by a segment on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and The Oprah Conversation, a chat show on which she's interviewed everyone from Barack Obama to Will Smith. That same year she appeared in Disney’s fantasy blockbuster, A Wrinkle in Time.
Oprah is famed for her riveting sit-down talks with everyone from Michael Jackson to Kim Kardashian. In March 2021 she gripped the nation once again with her exclusive interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle about their controversial split from the British Royal Family. According to Forbes, 17.1 million people tuned in to watch the bombshell interview.
Oprah teamed up with royalty once again by co-creating, producing and hosting the chat show The Me You Can’t See: A Path Forward with Prince Harry. Premiering exclusively on Apple TV+ in May 2021, the critically acclaimed documentary series explores mental health and wellbeing and features an array of celebrity guests, including Glenn Close and Lady Gaga.