Born on January 29, 1954, to an unwed teenage mother, was raised by her poor & abusive grandmother for the first few years. Despite the hardships of her physical environment, she enjoyed the support of her grandmother towards her education & the church community, who cherished her as a gifted child. But worse was yet to come, when she moved in with her mother at the age of six and in the coming years from the age of 9-13, she was repeatedly abused, molested by the male relatives & visitors in her house. At 14, she was out of her house, on her own & gave birth to a baby who died in infancy. After all the hardship, she finally went to live with her father, who was a strict disciplinarian. She was finally provided with a secure home life that she needed, his strict routine & curfews turned her life in a better direction. He was very concerned about her, making the best of her life and would not accept anything less than what he thought was best for her. With such a structured environment & nurturing home, Oprah flourished, she won various prizes for oratory & dramatic recitation and became an honour student.

She won a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, where she majored in speech communications and performing arts and was offered an on-air job at WVOL. Later she moved to Baltimore and co-hosted her first talk show. Her exceptional oratory skills & empathy towards her guests on the show made her the most famous & loved anchor.

Later she moved to Chicago to host the WLS-TV program, by then she had found a niche that perfectly suited her outgoing, empathetic personality, her skill to connect with people on the talk show, she was open about her personal life & connected with people in a way that it brought out the true emotions & stories of the guests that they had not even thought of speaking, ultimately her freestyle became so famous & loved by people that in September 1985, the show was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show.

She went on to gain new heights in her professional life, from hosting a talk show, acting in movies to starting her production house, etc. She supports numerous charities and has united a campaign to establish a national database of convicted child abusers, President Clinton signed the “Oprah Bill”, establishing the national database that she had sought.

Despite all the accomplishments, she refrains from marriage or having children due to the scars she acquired at her young age & does not shy away from her choices. She has no regrets, in one of her interviews, she said “I also believe that part of the reason why I don’t have regrets is that I got to fulfil it in the way that was best for me: the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, Those girls fill that maternal fold that I perhaps would have had. In fact, they overfill — I’m overflowed with maternal.