One of the most influential women in the world needs only one name: Oprah.
The 70-year-old multi-hyphenate talk show host, journalist, actor, producer, business magnate, advocate, and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey has been a billionaire since 2003 and the richest African American of the 20th century, yet it seems like she’s only getting started.
Winfrey most recently made headlines from claims made by The Washington Examiner, which alleged that she had received $1 million from Kamala Harris during her 2024 Presidential run.
But, Winfrey says, she doesn’t take a dime from her political endorsements.
“Usually I am reluctant to respond to rumors in general, but these days I realize that if you don’t stop a lie, it just gets bigger,” Winfrey wrote in a comment on Instagram, “I was not paid a dime. My time and energy was my way of supporting the campaign.”
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Harpo Productions, Winfrey’s multimedia company, collaborated with the Harris/Walz campaign on the October 19 “United for America” live-streaming event filmed at an undisclosed location in Michigan. In a statement obtained by Variety, Harpo said that it provided production items including lights, cameras, microphones, seating, and crew to stage the live production.
“The people who worked on that production needed to be paid. And were,” Winfrey said in the statement, noting, “I did not take any personal fee.”
So, how does Oprah make her wealth? And what is she worth now?
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What is Oprah’s net worth?
According to Forbes, as of November 2024, Oprah’s empire is worth a hefty $3 billion, deserving of its own “Succession”-style drama.
Most of Winfrey’s wealth is attributed to profits from her long-running talk show “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and critically acclaimed films by Harpo Productions, such as “The Color Purple,” (2023) “Selma” (2014) and “Beloved” (1998).
How did Oprah get rich? What does she own & invest in?
In terms of investments, Winfrey actually sold most of her shares of OWN, the network she created, to Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) in 2020. At the time, OWN was valued at $180 million; she walked away with over $36 million while retaining a 5% ownership stake in her eponymous network.
Winfrey has also invested in Weight Watchers. Serving as the company’s spokesperson from 2015–2024, she reportedly took home a cumulative total of $221 million from the deal. The weight loss company’s stock price skyrocketed after her investment, resulting in the advent of a new phrase, “Oprahfication,” by The Wall Street Journal — because everything Oprah touches seemingly turns to gold.
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In addition, Winfrey’s real estate holdings befit her status as a global media power player: She owns a reported $150 million worth of properties around the U.S., including a sprawling 1,000-acre estate in Hawaii worth over $6 million.
Is Oprah the richest woman in the world?
Actually, Winfrey doesn’t even make the list of Top 10 richest women in the world in 2024.
According to Forbes, you need at least $5 billion to gain entrance to that exclusive club, which includes the likes of Judy Love ($10.2 billion), co-owner of Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores, Diane Hendricks ($20.9 billion), co-founder of ABC Supply Co., and Rafaela Aponte-Diamant ($33.1 billion), co-founder of the MSC, a shipping and cruise conglomerate.
Still, $3 billion is hardly chump change, and we’ve all seen how Winfrey’s ideas resonate — even decades after the fact, so we won’t be surprised if she makes an appearance on the top-10 list in the future.
The fact is, Winfrey has proven her staying power — as well as her tenacity — through the years, and unlike Love, Hendricks, and Aponte-Diamant, Winfrey didn’t have significant capital investments or inherited wealth when she started her business back in 1986.
And that’s what makes her story so remarkable.
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What was Oprah’s early life like?
Oprah was born Orpah Gail Winfrey in the rural town of Kosciusko, Mississippi, on January 29, 1954. Oprah’s mother, Vernita Lee, was only 19 when she had her daughter. Note that the name she listed on her child’s birth certificate was not Oprah but rather Orpah, after the Old Testament figure mentioned in the Book of Ruth.
However, Orpah’s name was mispronounced basically from day one, so Oprah went with the new name — although she never legally changed its spelling.
Winfrey had a turbulent and abusive upbringing. Her mother, Vernita, was a housekeeper on Welfare support, who, for years at a time, would leave her daughter in the care of her grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee, while she looked for work.
She was so poor she lived on a farm without indoor plumbing and clothed young Winfrey in potato sacks as dresses; as a result, she was bullied in school.
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However, her grandmother also taught Winfrey to read, and is credited for instilling Winfrey with a positive self-image — this would help when, at the age of six, she moved to Milwaukee to live with her mother.
Upon Winfrey’s arrival at the shared home her mother had rented, Winfrey learned she wasn’t even allowed to sleep indoors. This was during an era of segregation, and Milwaukee had yet to be racially integrated. Winfrey said that her mother’s landlord was a light-skinned black woman who despised her because of her dark skin color, making her sleep outside on the front porch.
Winfrey also admitted to being sexually abused by a cousin, uncle, and a friend of the family beginning when she was nine years old; tragically, when she brought the issue to her family’s attention, they did not believe her.
Due to the abuse, at age 14, Winfrey gave birth to a son prematurely; he died shortly afterward. Winfrey later revealed that she had named him Canaan, a name which means “new land, new life.”
In high school, Winfrey moved to Nashville to live with her father, Vernon Winfrey. He owned a barber shop in the East Nashville community, later becoming a councilman, and encouraged Winfrey to focus fully on her education. She credited him with changing the course of her life, as she grew serious in her studies, became an honors student, was voted Most Popular Girl at East Nashville High School, and even won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant in 1971.
What was Oprah’s early career like?
Winfrey received a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, where she studied communication, although she would not officially graduate until 1986 after she had established her career as a talk show host.
Through college, Winfrey worked as a news reporter at WVOL radio; soon she would become the first black female news anchor on Nashville’s WAC-TV. She was promoted to co-anchor of the nightly newscast on WJZ-TV in Baltimore in 1976 but was criticized for getting too emotional when reporting stories, and so in 1978, she became a co-host of a local television talk show called “People Are Talking.”
In 1984, Winfrey left Baltimore for Chicago to host “AM Chicago,” the morning talk show on WLS-TV. Ratings quickly shot up, and the show went from last place to first, overtaking “Donahue,” which was also filmed in the city.
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“The Oprah Winfrey Show”
Taking the advice of Chicago movie critic Roger Ebert, Winfrey dreamed bigger than local television and signed a talk show deal with King World Productions. They expanded her program to an hour, broadcasted it nationwide, and renamed it in the process. The first episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” aired on September 8, 1986.
While critics at the time were quick to make note of Winfrey’s gender and appearance, with Time Magazine calling her “a black female of ample bulk,” they also couldn’t help but see her exceptional ability to relate to others. The same critic said that “guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah’s eye … They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is a talk show as a group therapy session.”
The reason people could open up with Winfrey was because she was so candid herself, revealing personal details about her struggles to lose weight or the abuse she endured as a child. Because Winfrey was so relatable, she became a trusted and beloved personality.
She is also credited for fostering a more inclusive environment for the LGBTQIA+ community by hosting shows that featured gay, lesbian, and transgendered guests in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a time when queer people had far less mainstream exposure. Winfrey also encouraged comedian Ellen DeGeneres to embrace her sexuality and even played the role of therapist on the 1997 episode of “Ellen,” in which DeGeneres comes out of the closet.
However, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” also stirred up its share of controversy for featuring guests that promoted dubious, and often unscientifically proven health claims, like Dr. Oz’s weight-loss pills, Suzanne Somers’ hormone therapy recommendations, and Jenny McCarthy’s erroneous assertion linking autism and childhood vaccination.
“The Oprah Winfrey Show” ran for 25 years, through 2011, and in the process earned 47 Daytime Emmy awards. Oprah herself became a millionaire by age 32, and her annual paychecks blossomed to $30 million by the end of the decade. By age 49, she had become a billionaire. When her final show aired on May 25, 2011, Winfrey was raking in $315 million per year — that translates to $10 every second.
Oprah’s books and film roles
Winfrey’s talents didn’t stop at talk. She was cast in major roles in films like “The Color Purple” (1985), “The Women of Brewster Place” (1989), “The Butler” (2013), “Selma” (2014), and “A Wrinkle in Time,” (2017) and received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1986.
In addition, Winfrey has written five bestselling books around themes of self-empowerment, all of which became instant New York Times bestsellers:
- “The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Conversations from Super Soul Conversations” (2017)
- “The Path Made Clear” (2019)
- “What Happened to You?” (2021) co-written by Bruce D. Perry
- “Build the Life You Want” (2023) co-written by Arthur C. Brooks
- “What I Know for Sure” (2024)
Oprah’s Media Empire: Harpo Productions
In 1986, Winfrey founded a production company, Harpo Productions (Harpo is her name spelled backward), so she could be in charge of her talk show and make all of its executive decisions.
In 1990, Harpo Productions began producing commercial films through Harpo Studios. It was responsible for commercial hits like “Precious” (2009), “Selma,” (2014), and the 2023 adaptation of “The Color Purple.” A radio division of the studio produced Winfrey’s popular XM Satellite Radio channel “Oprah & Friends,” which aired from 2008–2015.
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In the late 1990s, Harpo Studios was generating estimated annual revenues of $150 million a year. Through Harpo, Winfrey helped launch the careers of personalities like Rachael Ray, Dr. Phil, and Nate Berkus by co-producing their television shows, which further grew the company’s bottom line.
Another home run was “O, The Oprah Magazine,” a popular monthly magazine that was published under the Harpo Print umbrella. It ran for 20 years, from 2000 to 2020, and had a peak circulation of 16 million readers in 2008.
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What is “The Oprah Effect?”
Click on any browser, launch an app, or turn on a TV, and you’ll find celebrities, personalities, and influencers — all of whom seem to be taking a cue from Oprah. She wrote the playbook on how not only to achieve and sustain long-term success through the media but also to build additional wealth by promoting other people and their products.
You might even call her the OG influencer since she’s used her multi-channel platforms to promote the books, ideas, and products she honestly likes for decades through devices like:
Oprah’s Book Club
Launching in 1996, “Oprah’s Book Club” has made dozens of authors household names and multi-millionaires in the process. Winfrey’s recommendations include titles like “Becoming” by Michelle Obama, “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed, and “The Sweetness of Water” by Nathan Harris.
It’s estimated to have generated $80 million in book sales over its nearly 25-year (and counting) run, although Winfrey reiterates that her business does not profit from it. In a very Oprah-esque reflection, the mogul told The New York Times that “the reason I love books is because they teach us something about ourselves.”
Oprah’s Favorite Things
O’s holiday-themed list of gift ideas shines a light on small businesses and business owners. It’s estimated that being featured on Oprah’s annual list provides a business with a 300–400% sales boost, which results in “lots of yelling and screaming and high-fives,” as one artisanal soap maker told NPR in 2007.
What are Oprah’s charitable ventures?
Oprah’s Angel Network, launched in 1998, raised over $80 million in support of nonprofits around the world and stayed operational through 2010. Winfrey personally handled all administrative costs so that 100% of donations went directly to charity programs.
Winfrey has also been active in South Africa, filming episodes of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” there where she spotlighted the impact of AIDS on children. In addition, she opened The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in 2007.
The 22-acre Johannesburg campus features classrooms equipped with the latest technology, science labs, a library, and a theater — and Oprah herself has been known to teach classes virtually.
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What are some of Oprah’s real estate holdings?
Oprah and her partner of 36 years, Stedman Graham, currently reside in a sprawling, 66-acre estate in Montecito, Calif. that she named “The Promised Land.” They count A-listers like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Ellen DeGeneres as neighbors.
She originally purchased the initial, 42-acre spread for $50 million in 2001. Winfrey’s compound includes a 23,000 square-foot neo-Georgian mansion with a pool and a guest house, where Stedman famously lived in 2020 because Oprah said he did not take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously enough. But her real estate portfolio in the area doesn’t end there.
During a multi-year house-hunting spree, Winfrey added a nearby 23-acre parcel for $28.85 million in 2017, and another 4-acre spread for $6.85 million in 2019 (its previous owner was actor Jeff Bridges).
In addition, Winfrey has owned properties spanning the country, including a luxury waterfront estate on Orcas Island, Washington, that she sold for $14 million in 2021, and a series of properties in Telluride, Colorado, that cost a combined $24.85 million.
Winfrey also owns a 1,000-acre spread on the island of Maui. A combination of two properties, Architectural Digest reports that Winfrey spent just $5.3 million on the pair in 2003. Naturally, the mansion boasts a book-lined library and a private media room.
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