Oprah Winfrey was already the planet's most watched talkshow host, one of America's most successful magazine publishers, a billionaire, an Oscar-nominated actor, the most important black philanthropist in the US and, according to several assessments, the most influential woman in the world.
So from one perspective, the school that she opened for 152 poor South African girls outside Johannesburg yesterday was perhaps not all that significant. But that was not how it felt for Buhle Zulu, 12, who found herself whisked from sleeping on a floor with six family members in Soweto to her own bedroom and bathroom in the site, funded with $40m (£20m) of Winfrey's $1.5bn fortune. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls also features computer and science laboratories, a theatre, library, gymnasium, health centre, sports fields and beauty salon.
On what she called "the proudest, gravest day of my life," Winfrey pledged, at an opening ceremony attended by Nelson Mandela and a clutch of A-list celebrities that she would make the school "the best in the world", helping its pupils "change the face of the nation".
Stars including the singers Tina Turner, Mariah Carey and Mary J Blige, the film-maker Spike Lee and the actor Sydney Poitier watched as the talkshow host, herself born in rural poverty and raised in deprived inner-city neighbourhoods, described how she had visited the families of many of the students, who were selected from 3,500 applicants. To qualify for a place, the girls had to show academic and leadership potential and have a household income of less than £400 a month.
"I went to their homes. I know all of them by name. Their story is my story," Winfrey said. She had chosen "every brick, tile, sheet and spoon" in the academy herself, she added.
"When you educate a girl you begin to change the face of a nation," Winfrey said. Attending the school would "change the trajectory of these girls' lives. They will excel and pass their excellence on to their families, their nation and our world. I wanted to give this opportunity to girls who had a light so bright that not even poverty could dim that light."
Thirteen-year-old pupil Lesego Tlhabanyane told Associated Press: "I would have had a completely different life if this hadn't happened to me. Now I get a life where I get to be treated like a movie star." But Winfrey said that the school, in the town of Henley-on-Klip, south of Johannesburg, was not elitist. "If you are surrounded by beautiful things, and wonderful teachers who inspire you, that beauty brings out the beauty in you," she said.
Mr Mandela, the 88-year-old former South African president, was helped to the stage by Winfrey. "The key to any country's future is in educating its youth," he told the audience. "Oprah is therefore not only investing in a few young individuals but in the future of our country. We are indebted to her for her selfless efforts. This is a lady that, despite her own disadvantaged background, has become one of the benefactors of the disadvantaged throughout the world and we should congratulate her for that."
Fikile Koetle, who came to peek at the ceremonies from outside the main gate, was enthusiastic about the new school in his neighbourhood. "This is a brilliant idea and the greatest gift anyone could give to South Africa," he said. "These girls will grow to be our doctors, lawyers, cabinet ministers. Even one will become our own Oprah, on television."
Winfrey said the number of pupils at the academy would increase to 450 in the next four years. She is planning another secondary school for boys and girls in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province. All the students would be tested for HIV, with their parents' consent, she said: "Girls who are educated are less likely to get HIV/Aids, and in this country which has such a pandemic, we have to begin to change the pandemic."
The academy is a dramatic contrast to most South African schools, which are dilapidated and overcrowded as they struggle to overcome the neglect of apartheid. South Africa's matriculation exam pass rate has dropped for the third consecutive year, according to government figures released last week. There had been high hopes for this year's class, which started school when apartheid ended in 1994, and were called "Madiba's children" after Mr Mandela's clan name.
But two-thirds of the 1.6 million who started school 12 years ago dropped out before their exams. Just 5% of the original class did well enough to be eligible to attend university.