Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Birth Date: January 29, 1954
Birth Place: Kosciusko, Miss.

When young Oprah Winfrey dated movie critic Roger Ebert, he persuaded her to take her successful Chicago talk show into syndication. By 1986, The Oprah Winfrey Show had become the highest-rated talk show in TV history.

Now worth more than a billion dollars, Winfrey has succeeded on many fronts – as an Oscar-nominated actress (The Color Purple), activist, magazine editor, producer, book club sponsor and radio host.

She has raised and personally donated millions of dollars to victims of poverty and disease and openly speaks about her own experience with sexual abuse as a child, the baby she had at 14 who did not survive, and of her drug use as a young adult. But, according to Winfrey, none of her achievements make her more proud than the two schools she opened for South Africa's neediest girls.