* At age 19 became the first female African-American news anchor.
* In 1984, she moved to Chicago to host a morning talk show which was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show within a year. She came to own the program through her company Harpo Inc, and it was nationally syndicated in 1986.
* The Oprah Winfrey Show is the top-rated U.S. daytime talk show. Its final season was watched by an average 6.4 million U.S. viewers and millions more in 150 nations overseas.
* The Oprah Winfrey Show has won 48 daytime Emmy awards, including those for Winfrey as host.
* The Oprah Book Club has championed 65 titles and has almost two million members.
* Winfrey was ranked the third-most-powerful woman in the world on Forbes magazine’s 2010 list, behind U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and Kraft Foods CEO Irene Rosenfeld. She was ranked 130 on Forbes’ 2010 U.S. rich list, with an estimated fortune of $2.7 billion.
* Winfrey was Oscar-nominated for her role in the 1985 movie The Color Purple. She also produced the Broadway stage version of The Color Purple and the movies Beloved and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.
* Other Oprah Winfrey projects include her charity Angel Network, the O magazine, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls near Johannesburg, South Africa, and the OWN cable TV channel
