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Oprah Winfrey is one of the most famous people on Earth, thanks to an extraordinary career stretching back more than 35 years. From her Oscar-nominated role in the 1986 movie The Color Purple, through the incredible success of her talk show and a string of huge celebrity interview scoops, she has never been far from the public eye. She’s just as famous for the philanthropic gestures which have been a staple feature of her talk shows, but less is known about her offscreen charitable endeavors, and in particular her work in education. As someone who experienced an incredibly difficult childhood herself, Oprah has - with the determination of a True Superhero - been quietly committed to helping children get the best possible start in life.

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Sack Girl

Oprah was born in Mississippi in 1954. Her mother, Vernita Lee, was just 18 at the time, while her father, Vernon Winfrey, was a soldier who was swiftly called away on active duty. Soon after Oprah’s birth, her mother left Mississippi to travel north, placing Oprah in the care of her grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee. 

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Hattie Mae was a firm believer in education, but also a strict disciplinarian. She had Oprah reading the Bible by the age of two, but was also abusive. Oprah would later write: “I was beaten for the slightest reasons. Spilled water, a broken glass, the inability to keep quiet or still… The long-term impact of being whupped -  then forced to hush and even smile about it -  turned me into a world-class people pleaser for most of my life.” They were also very poor, living on a farm with no running water or electricity. Oprah was sent to school wearing clothes made from potato sacks, earning her the nickname ‘Sack Girl’ from her classmates. 

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The elderly Hattie Mae became too ill to raise Oprah, who was sent to Milwaukee to live at a boarding house with her mother. The boarding house owner refused to allow the six-year-old Oprah into the building, insisting that she sleep on the porch. 

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A lot of big words

During these difficult early years, Oprah’s favorite place to be was in school, where she had an advantage over the other children thanks to her grandmother’s scripture lessons. In kindergarten back in Mississippi, Oprah wrote a letter to her teacher that boldly stated: “Dear Miss New, I do not belong here because I know a lot of big words.” She later explained, “Then, I wrote every big word I knew – elephant, hippopotamus, Mississippi, Nicodemus, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the Bible.” Miss New talked to the principal, and Oprah skipped a year into first grade. In Milwaukee she skipped another one, going directly into the third grade. She also impressed as a public speaker, giving readings at her Baptist church. She later described this time as "the beginning of my broadcasting career. I loved being in front of people, dressed up, and being able to say my piece."

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Sadly, Oprah’s home life went from bad to worse. From the age of nine onward she was sexually abused for several years by an older cousin. While she continued to excel at school, earning many prizes and awards, she became rebellious, experimenting with sex and drugs. She ran away from home aged 13, and aged 14 prematurely gave birth to a son who died in hospital a few days later. 

Becoming Oprah

It’s a harrowing story, but perhaps the most amazing thing about Oprah’s life is how suddenly she turned her life around once she had control over her own destiny. By the time she was 16, she had gone to live with her father in Nashville, and was once again giving readings at her local church. A Califonian pastor heard her speak and paid her $500 to come to Los Angeles to speak at his church. This was the first time Oprah saw Hollywood and she vowed to return as soon as possible. 

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She continued to excel in school, and during her senior year she was hired as a newsreader by her local radio station, WVOL. She also started to win beauty contests; she became Miss Black Tennessee and represented the state at Miss Black America. Understandably, television news came calling and Oprah soon became the youngest news anchor and first black female news anchor on Nashville’s WLAC-TV channel.

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Although Oprah thrived in Nashville’s newsrooms, the reserved world of headlines and autocues did not make the best use of her talent for empathetic broadcasting, and it was only when she made the leap to talk shows that she became globally famous. In 1984 she was offered the role of host on a Chicago station’s struggling morning talk show, AM Chicago. Within months, the show went from last to first place in the ratings.

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The True Superhero of talk 

Important people were beginning to notice Oprah. One was the hugely influential music, film, and television producer Quincy Jones who insisted that this new star be cast in the 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. Oprah had no acting experience but her natural talent led to her being nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Meanwhile, AM Chicago had become The Oprah Winfrey Show and was now nationally syndicated and a ratings smash. Over the next 25 years, the show would go on to be broadcast in 149 different countries, with between 15m and 20m people watching the show every day in the United States alone.

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The Oprah Winfrey Show was famous for many things; Oprah’s skill at communicating with ordinary people, the enormous giveaways where she would gift cars or holidays to every member of the audience, and the incredible interviews with many of the biggest celebrities on Earth. Oprah had gone from reading the news to making it, creating headlines as she coaxed amazing revelations and confessions out of everybody from Michael Jackson to Prince Harry. 

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Becoming the teacher

Meanwhile, as the giveaways on The Oprah Winfrey Show became more spectacular, Oprah’s philanthropic work behind the scenes also quietly grew, with a focus that was firmly on education. By 2012, the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation had given away more than $400m to educational causes, providing education for more than 72,000 people. Much of this money has been invested in the United States, in generous endowments to institutions such as Morehouse College in Georgia, but Oprah has also invested a great deal of her time and effort in a project close to her heart, but much further away.

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In 2000, Oprah was vacationing with her partner Stedman Graham at the home of Nelson Mandela, on the Western Cape of South Africa. She talks of how she sat on the floor in his home and listened as he described the state of schooling in the country, and how she was immediately moved to pledge $10m toward a new South African school. “When you go to Nelson Mandela's house, what do you take?" she later said. "You can't bring a candle.“ Ten years later, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy For Girls opened its doors to students, and Oprah’s investment had grown from $10m to $40m. "It started out as an emotional giveback," said Winfrey. "It has developed into a way of life for me. What it really is, is an investment in leadership and an investment in the future of a country. That's how I now see it. I don't look at it as, 'Oh, gee, my little school.'" 

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Oprah even teaches lessons at the school via satellite link but after her retirement - assuming she ever does retire - she has spoken of her wish to move to South Africa to teach her students in person. Clearly Oprah wants nothing more than to offer other talented young girls the opportunities that she worked so hard for.

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