Although Oprah Winfrey is not alone in achieving billionaire status, she is the world’s first black woman to have done so. Forbes estimates her net worth at $2.6 billion, though the outlet currently has her Real Time Net Worth at $2.5 billion. Winfrey also ranks at No. 1217 on Forbes 2023 Billionaires list. The 69-year-old made her fortune by working hard on The Oprah Winfrey Show and making wise investments. In the 25 years that her talk show ran, Winfrey has transformed it into a media and business empire. With the reinvested profits from her show combined with the profits from films including The Color Purple, Beloved, and Selma (which Harpo Productions coproduced), she has made more than $2 billion. As the daughter of a teenage mother, Winfrey was raised without indoor plumbing in rural Mississippi.
Her first paying job came at age 15: “babysitting Mrs. Ashberry’s rowdy kids,” she wrote on Oprah.com. According to her, she was underpaid at 50 cents an hour because Mrs. Ashberry expected her to do household chores as well. Her next job was at a five-and-dime, earning $1.50 an hour. She got her first gig in broadcasting at 17 when she secured a $100-a-week radio job. In her early years, Winfrey began her career as a television news anchor. She would often empathize with the stories she used to hear from her viewers, and in turn, she would cry on the air. Her move from anchor to host was a logical transition. When she was in her 30s, Winfrey earned $30 million a year from the Oprah Winfrey Show’s massive success. By the time the show ended in May 2011, she had made $315 million a year or $10 a second from the talk show.
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Winfrey purchased 10% of Weight Watchers in 2015 for $6.79 per share, or $43 million in total, while serving as a brand ambassador. By January 2018, the shares were trading for about $63, or nine times what she paid. In addition to investing in real estate, she owns and/or has owned homes in California, Florida, Washington State, Colorado, Tennessee, Illinois, and over a dozen properties in Hawaii. Winfrey has also written several New York Times bestsellers, earning her millions. However, she is both a writer and an enthusiastic reader. Her book club helped sell 55 million copies of 70 titles she promoted on her show in 1996, according to USA Today.
In 2000, Winfrey introduced O, The Oprah Magazine, a glossy monthly featuring her face on every cover. O subscriptions and newsstand copies sold for $1 billion during the magazine’s first 15 years, according to Women’s Wear Daily. She formed the cable channel OWN around 2011 and sold most of the company’s stake to Warner Bros Discovery in 2020 in exchange for hundreds of thousands of shares in the company. Winfrey has focused her philanthropy on education. AIDS orphans make up a large percentage of the students at her school in South Africa. In addition to more than $100 million donated to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, she has donated $425 million throughout her career.
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Pictured: David Arquette (“Dewey Riley”), left, and Courteney Cox (“Gale Weathers”) in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group's "Scream." Photo Cr: Brownie Harris/Paramount Pictures ©2021 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
