She is a mother figure to millions. But at 14, Oprah lost the only biological child she ever had.

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of child abuse.

Oprah Winfrey has been living it up in Australia, following an itinerary crafted by her good friend Hugh Jackman.

But she's not just here for coastal walks and Bills hotcakes. For the first time in a decade, Oprah is back for a national speaking tour.

At her Oprah In Conversation events, she's been reflecting on authenticity and what she's learned from a lifetime of listening.

It's something she knows better than most.

The 71-year-old has spent 50 years interviewing people from every corner of life. She first appeared on screen at just 19, reading the morning news in Baltimore.

Since then, she's spoken to tens of thousands of people, including some of the biggest names in the world, and has penned several best-selling books.

And it's her own unconventional life story that's shaped her empathy and made her one of the most powerful storytellers we have today.

So far, she's visited Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane, and will farewell the nation at her final show in Melbourne tonight.

As Australia prepares to say goodbye to the media icon, it feels only right to take a look back at how Oprah became Oprah, and why she still reigns supreme.

Watch the story of Oprah Winfrey you might not know. Post continues below.

Oprah's childhood.

She was born in Mississippi in 1954, and given the Biblical name Orpah, but it was too difficult for many to pronounce — and so she became known as Oprah.

(Interestingly, her production company years later would be called Harpo — the reverse of her name. Harpo was also the name of the husband of Sofia, played by Oprah, in The Colour Purple, a role for which Oprah won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination in 1985.)

Oprah’s parents, Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey, separated after her birth. Vernita moved cities for work, and Oprah moved in with her grandmother, living in poverty.

Her grandmother was apparently cruel with discipline, but instilled in her granddaughter a lifelong love of reading.

Nevertheless, the highest expectation of Oprah was to find a decent white family to work for, which required no education at all.

Dressed in a modified potato sack dress sewn by her grandmother, Oprah knew she wanted more. Her childhood nickname was “Sack Girl” but Oprah was determined to be and give much more.

Oprah as a child. Image: Instagram/oprah.

In an essay on Oprah.com, she recalled, “A still, small voice inside me, really more a feeling than a voice, said, 'This will not be your life. Your life will be more than hanging clothes on a line'."

At six, Oprah joined her mother in Milwaukee, but Vernita couldn’t cope with Oprah, alongside her other very young children Patricia (Lee Lloyd) and Jeffrey (Lee).

Oprah was thus sent to live with her father in Nashville, who believed education was important and encouraged his daughter to excel at school. She would go on to win a scholarship to Tennessee State University.

But true to form, she dropped out after one year to pursue her true passion — the media.

At 17, Oprah also entered the Miss Black Tennessee Beauty Pageant in 1971 and won.

In the meantime, Vernita gave birth to another daughter, also named Patricia (Lofton), but the baby was adopted to another family at birth. This second half-sister was unknown to Oprah until 2010.

In an Oprah Where Are They Now special in 2013, Oprah said of her youngest sister, “I think she’s a remarkable human being” for enduring what she has.

The sisters became close, forming a genuine sister bond, with Oprah even taking Patricia to the Academy Awards in 2011.

Oprah's brother Jeffrey died of AIDS-related causes in 1989. He was just 29.

The older Patricia (Lee Lloyd), passed in 2003 at the age of 43. Her cause of death was not initially obvious but a coroner later determined it was due to a drug overdose.

A young Oprah went through so much. Image: Instagram/oprah.

Oprah went through sexual abuse.

Oprah’s childhood and teens were rife with sexual abuse.

On an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986, Oprah revealed to the audience that she had been raped aged nine by a relative, and then further relatives, and that her family did not believe her at the time.

Later, after running away from home aged 14, Oprah became pregnant, but her son died in infancy.

It wouldn’t be until 2015, in Melbourne, during a speaking tour, that Oprah would reveal the name of her son, whom she had never been able to bring home.

"So I have named him, I had a little boy named Canaan," she announced.

"I did have a son. And I named him Canaan because Canaan means 'new land, new life'."

In a 2011 interview with Piers Morgan, Oprah opened up more on the topic.

"I went back to school, and nobody knew," she said. "Because had anybody known at that time, I wouldn't have been able to be head of student council.

"I wouldn't have been chosen as one of the two teenagers in the state of Tennessee to go to the White House conference on youth. None of those things would have happened, and the entire trajectory of my life would have been different."

It was a reason that Oprah decided not to have more children.

Instead, she’s focused much of her career on children’s education by supporting the work of American teachers and opening the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa in 2007.

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“I know what it feels like to not be wanted… you can use it as a stepping stone to build great empathy for people,” Oprah told David Letterman in 2018. “Everybody has a story and your story is as equally as valuable and important as my story.

“My story just helped define and shape me as does everybody’s story.”

Oprah's career.

It’s this rocky start that made Oprah so good at her job of interviewing people. By 1983, Oprah moved to Chicago to host The Oprah Winfrey Show.

It aired from 1986 to 2011, and was the most successful American talk show ever. In those 25 years, the main themes of Oprah’s work were many and varied.

Despite being known for her flashy Christmas giving shows, and her 2004 Pontiac car giveaway to her entire audience, Oprah has opened and changed conversations on topics such as child sexual abuse, AIDS, grief, sexual identity and race.

By having guests with lived experiences in these areas, Oprah helped destroy taboos and educate her massive audience. But most importantly, her show gave a voice to many people who were marginalised or silenced.

Oprah got her start as a newsreader. Image: 13 Eyewitness News.

Since The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah has continued to educate and inspire in various forms, such as speaking tours, shows on her television network OWN, Super Soul Sundays, and The Oprah Conversation series on Apple TV.

As her career developed, Oprah became widely recognised as the most powerful person in media, and remains so to this day.

It's meant she's made some powerful friends, such as the Obamas, esteemed authors Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, Serena Williams, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Apart from Oprah's personal philanthropy, she's also helped launch the careers of others such as Dr Phil, Dr Oz, and her own best friend, Gayle King.

Their successes are a testament to Oprah's generosity — and to her influence.

Steadman Graham.

Oprah has many times attributed her continuing success to the two closest people in her life, her long-term partner Steadman Graham, and her best friend, Gayle King.

The 74-year-old businessman, Graham, met Oprah at a charity event in 1986. The long-term couple has been famously private about their relationship for years, before social media made it possible for them to control their own narrative.

Oprah has explained her decision to share a "spiritual partnership" with Graham, even after he proposed to her in 1993.

"The moment after I said yes to his proposal, I had doubts," the billionaire wrote in O magazine in 2020.

"I realised I didn't actually want a marriage. I wanted to be asked. I wanted to know he felt I was worthy of being his missus, but I didn't want the sacrifices, the compromises, the day-in-day-out commitment required to make a marriage work. My life with the show was my priority, and we both knew it."

"He and I agree that had we tied the marital knot, we would not still be together."

Image: Instagram/oprah.

Gayle King.

In contrast to the seen but mostly low-profile Graham, Oprah's best friend of more than 40 years, Gayle King, has publicly been a significant feature in Oprah's life.

In a 2019 Instagram post, Oprah said, "I can't tell you how many times people have introduced me to their best friends as, 'She's my Gayle'. The reason our friendship has worked for over 40 years, without arguments or fallouts, is that we've always been happy with our own lives.

"A true friend can't be jealous of you, or want to take advantage of you in any way. Ever since we met in 1976, we've been doing the same thing. Listening. Talking. Laughing (a lot). Building dreams. Cheering. Being a shoulder to cry on. Speaking the truth. Being the truth."

Oprah and her best friend, US TV presenter Gayle King. Image: Instagram/gayleking.

Oprah's fortune.

Oprah became the first-ever Black woman billionaire in 2003 according to Forbes, a truly remarkable achievement. Oprah is now worth approximately $3.2 billion.

If you or anyone you know needs expert help, please contact Bravehearts — an organisation providing support to victims of child abuse. If you are concerned about the welfare of a child, you can get advice from the Child Abuse Protection Hotline (1800 688 009) or the 24-Hour Child Abuse Report Line (131 478).

This article was published in 2021 and has been updated with new information.

Feature image: Instagram/oprahdaily.