Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama^[1] (née Robinson; born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised on the South Side of the city, Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. In her early legal career, she worked at the law firm Sidley Austin where she met her future husband. She subsequently worked in nonprofits and as the associate dean of student services at the University of Chicago. Later, she served as vice president for community and external affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center. Michelle married Barack in 1992, and they have two daughters.

Obama campaigned for her husband’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. She was the first African-American woman to serve as first lady. As first lady, Obama worked as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating. She has written four books, including her New York Times best-selling memoir Becoming (2018) and The Light We Carry (2022).

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born on January 17, 1964, in Chicago, Illinois, to Fraser Robinson III (1935–1991),^[2] a city water plant employee and Democratic precinct captain, and Marian Shields Robinson (1937–2024), a secretary at Spiegel’s catalog store.^[3] Her mother was a full-time homemaker until Michelle entered high school.^[4]

The Robinson and Shields families trace their roots to pre-Civil War African Americans in the American South.^[2] On her father’s side, she is descended from the Gullah people of South Carolina’s Lowcountry region.^[5] Her paternal great-great-grandfather, Jim Robinson, was born into slavery in 1850 on Friendfield Plantation, near Georgetown, South Carolina.^[6][7] He became a freedman at the age of 15 after the war. Some of Obama’s paternal family still reside in the Georgetown area.^[8][9] Her grandfather, Fraser Robinson Jr., built his own house in South Carolina. He and his wife LaVaughn (née Johnson) returned to the Lowcountry from Chicago after retirement.^[6]

Among her maternal ancestors was her great-great-great-grandmother, Melvinia Dosey Shields, born into slavery in South Carolina but sold to Henry Walls Shields, who had a 200-acre farm in Clayton County, Georgia, near Atlanta. Melvinia’s first son, Adolphus T. Shields, was biracial and born into slavery around 1860. Based on DNA and other evidence, in 2012, researchers said his father was likely 20-year-old Charles Marion Shields, son of Melvinia’s master. They may have had a continuing relationship, as she had two more mixed-race children and lived near Shields after emancipation, taking his surname (she later changed her surname).^[10]

As was often the case, Melvinia did not talk to relatives about Dolphus’s father.^[11] Dolphus Shields, with his wife Alice, moved to Birmingham, Alabama, after the Civil War. They were great-great-grandparents of Robinson, whose grandparents had moved to Chicago.^[11] Other of their children’s lines migrated to Cleveland, Ohio, in the 20th century.^[10]

All four of Robinson’s grandparents had multiracial ancestors, reflecting the complex history of the United States. Her extended family has said that people did not talk about the era of slavery when they were growing up.^[10] Her distant ancestry includes Irish, English, and Native American roots.^[12] Among her contemporary extended family is Rabbi Capers Funnye, her first cousin once removed. Funnye, born in Georgetown, South Carolina, and about 12 years older than Michelle, is the son of her paternal grandfather’s sister and her husband; he converted to Judaism after college.^[13][14]

Robinson’s childhood home was on the upper floor of 7436 South Euclid Avenue in Chicago’s South Shore community area, which her parents rented from her great-aunt, who had the first floor.^{[3][15][16][17]} She was raised in what she describes as a “conventional” home, with “the mother at home, the father works, you have dinner around the table”.^[18] Her elementary school was down the street. She and her family enjoyed playing games such as Monopoly, reading, and frequently saw extended family on both sides.^[19] She played piano,^[20] learning from her great-aunt, who was a piano teacher.^[21] The Robinsons attended services at nearby South Shore United Methodist Church.^[15] They used to vacation in a rustic cabin in White Cloud, Michigan.^[15] She and her 21-month-older brother, Craig, skipped the second grade.^[3][22]

Robinson’s father suffered from multiple sclerosis, which had a profound effect on her. Subsequently, she was determined to stay out of trouble and perform well in school.^[23] By sixth grade, Michelle joined a gifted class at Bryn Mawr Elementary School (later renamed Bouchet Academy).^[24] She attended Whitney Young High School,^[25] Chicago’s first magnet high school, established as a selective enrollment school, where she was a classmate of Jesse Jackson‘s daughter Santita.^[19] The round-trip commute from the Robinsons’ South Side home to the Near West Side, where the school was located, took three hours.^[26] Michelle recalled being fearful of how others would perceive her, but disregarded any negativity around her and used it “to fuel me, to keep me going”.^[27][28] She recalled facing gender discrimination growing up, saying, for example, that rather than asking her for her opinion on a given subject, people commonly tended to ask what her older brother thought.^[29] She was on the honor roll for four years, took Advanced Placement classes, was a member of the National Honor Society, and served as student council treasurer.^[3] She graduated in 1981 as the salutatorian of her class.^[26]

Robinson was inspired to follow her brother to Princeton University, where she matriculated in 1981.^[30][4] She majored in sociology and minored in African-American studies, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1985 after completing a 99-page senior thesis under the supervision of Walter Wallace.^[31][3][32]

Robinson recalls that some of her teachers in high school tried to dissuade her from applying, and that she had been warned against “setting my sights too high”.^[33][34] She believed her brother’s status as a student in good standing (he graduated in 1983) might have helped her during the admission process,^[35] but she was resolved to demonstrate her own worth.^[36] She has said she was overwhelmed during her first year, attributing this to the fact that neither of her parents had graduated from college,^[37] and that she had never spent time on a college campus.^[38]

The mother of a white roommate reportedly tried to get her daughter reassigned because of Michelle’s race.^[30] Robinson said being at Princeton was the first time she became more aware of her ethnicity and, despite the willingness of her classmates and teachers to reach out to her, she still felt “like a visitor on campus”.^[39][40] There were also issues of economic class. “I remember being shocked,” she says, “by college students who drove BMWs. I didn’t even know parents who drove BMWs.”^[26]

While at Princeton, Robinson became involved with the Third World Center (now known as the Carl A. Fields Center), an academic and cultural group which supported minority students. She ran their daycare center, which also offered after-school tutoring for older children.^[41] She challenged the teaching methodology for French because she felt it should be more conversational.^[42] As part of her requirements for graduation, she wrote a sociology thesis, entitled Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.^[43][44] She researched her thesis by sending a questionnaire to African-American graduates, asking that they specify when and how comfortable they were with their race prior to their enrollment at Princeton and how they felt about it when they were a student and since then. Of the 400 alumni to whom she sent the survey, fewer than 90 responded. Her findings did not support her hope that the black alumni would still identify with the African-American community, even though they had attended an elite university and had the advantages that accrue to its graduates.^[45]

Robinson pursued professional study, earning her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1988.^[46] By the time she applied to Harvard Law, biographer Bond wrote, her confidence had increased: “This time around, there was no doubt in her mind that she had earned her place”.^[45] Her faculty mentor at Harvard Law was Charles Ogletree, who has said she had answered the question that had plagued her throughout Princeton by the time she arrived at Harvard Law: whether she would remain the product of her parents or keep the identity she had acquired at Princeton; she had concluded she could be “both brilliant and black”.^[47]

At Harvard, Robinson participated in demonstrations advocating the hiring of professors who were members of minority groups.^[48] She worked for the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, assisting low-income tenants with housing cases.^[49] She is the third first lady to have a postgraduate degree, after her two immediate predecessors, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush.^[50] She later said her education gave her opportunities beyond what she had ever imagined.^[51]

Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson, was a stay-at-home mother.^[52] Her father was Fraser C. Robinson III, who worked at the city’s water purification plant.^[52] Robinson’s father, Fraser, died from complications from his illness in March 1991.^[53] She would later say that although he was the “hole in my heart” and “loss in my scar”, the memory of her father has motivated her each day since.^[38] Her friend Suzanne Alele died from cancer around this time as well. These losses made her think of her contributions toward society and how well she was influencing the world from her law firm in her first job after law school. She considered this a turning point.^[54] Her mother died in May 2024, which Obama has said she takes part in therapy to help with.^[55]

Robinson met Barack Obama when they were among the few African Americans at their law firm, Sidley Austin LLP (she has sometimes said only two, although others have noted that there were others in different departments).^[56] She was assigned to mentor him while he was a summer associate.^[57] Their relationship started with a business lunch and then a community organization meeting where he first impressed her.^[58]

Before meeting Obama, Michelle had told her mother she intended to focus solely on her career.^[59] The couple’s first date was to Spike Lee‘s movie Do the Right Thing (1989).^[60] Barack Obama has said the couple had an “opposites attract” scenario in their initial interest in each other since Michelle had stability from her two-parent home while he was “adventurous”.^[61] They married on October 3, 1992.^[58] After suffering a miscarriage, Michelle underwent in vitro fertilisation^[62] to conceive their daughters Malia Ann (born 1998) and Natasha (known as Sasha, born 2001).^[63]

The Obama family lived on Chicago’s South Side, where Barack taught at the University of Chicago Law School. He was elected to the state senate in 1996 and to the U.S. Senate in 2004. They chose to keep their residence in Chicago after Barack’s election rather than to move to Washington, DC, as they felt it was better for their daughters. Throughout her husband’s 2008 campaign for U.S. president, Obama made a “commitment to be away overnight only once a week – to campaign only two days a week and be home by the end of the second day” for their two daughters.^[64]

She once requested that her then-fiancé meet her prospective boss, Valerie Jarrett, when considering her first career move;^[18] Jarrett became one of her husband’s closest advisors.^[65][66] The marital relationship has had its ebbs and flows; the combination of an evolving family life and beginning political career led to many arguments about balancing work and family. Barack Obama wrote in his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, that “Tired and stressed, we had little time for conversation, much less romance.”^[67] Despite their family obligations and careers, they continued to try to schedule “date nights” while they lived in Chicago.^[68]

The Obamas’ daughters attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a private school.^[69] As a member of the school’s board, Michelle fought to maintain diversity in the school when other board members connected with the University of Chicago tried to reserve more slots for children of the university faculty. This resulted in a plan to expand the school to increase enrollment.^[4] In Washington, DC, Malia and Sasha attended Sidwell Friends School, after also considering Georgetown Day School.^[70][71] In 2008, Michelle said in an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that they did not intend to have any more children.^[72] The Obamas received advice from past first ladies Laura Bush, Rosalynn Carter, and Hillary Clinton about raising children in the White House.^[71] Marian Robinson, Michelle’s mother, moved in to the White House to assist with child care.^[73]

Obama was raised United Methodist and joined the Trinity United Church of Christ, a mostly black congregation of the Reformed denomination known as the United Church of Christ. She and Barack Obama were married there by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. On May 31, 2008, Barack and Michelle Obama announced that they had withdrawn their membership in Trinity United Church of Christ saying: “Our relations with Trinity have been strained by the divisive statements of Reverend Wright, which sharply conflict with our own views.”^[74]

The Obama family attended several different Protestant churches after moving to Washington D.C. in 2009, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square, known as the Presidents’ Church. At the 49th African Methodist Episcopal Church‘s general conference, Michelle Obama encouraged the attendees to advocate for political awareness, saying, “To anyone who says that church is no place to talk about these issues, you tell them there is no place better – no place better, because ultimately, these are not just political issues – they are moral issues, they’re issues that have to do with human dignity and human potential, and the future we want for our kids and our grandkids.”^[75]

Following law school, Obama became an associate at the Chicago office of the law firm Sidley & Austin, where she met her future husband. At the firm, she worked on marketing and intellectual-property law.^[3] She continues to hold her law license, but as she no longer needs it for her work, she has kept it on a voluntary inactive status since 1993.^[76][77]

In 1991, she held public sector positions in the Chicago city government as an assistant to the mayor and as the assistant commissioner of planning and development. In 1993, she became executive director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit organization encouraging young people to work on social issues in nonprofit groups and government agencies.^[25] She worked there nearly four years and set fundraising records for the organization that stood twelve years after she had left.^[19] Obama later said she had never been happier in her life prior to working “to build Public Allies”.^[78]

In 1996, Obama served as the associate dean of student services at the University of Chicago, where she developed the university’s Community Service Center.^[79] In 2002, she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May 2005, as vice president for community and external affairs.^[80]

She continued to hold the University of Chicago Hospitals position during the primary campaign of 2008 but cut back to part-time in order to spend time with her daughters as well as work for her husband’s election.^[81] She subsequently took a leave of absence from her job.^[82]

According to the couple’s 2006 income tax return, her salary was $273,618 from the University of Chicago Hospitals, while her husband had a salary of $157,082 from the United States Senate. The Obamas’ total income was $991,296, which included $51,200 that she earned as a member of the board of directors of TreeHouse Foods and investments and royalties from his books.^[83]

Obama served as a salaried board member of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. (NYSE: THS),^[84] a major Wal-Mart supplier from shortly after her husband was seated in the Senate until she cut ties shortly after her husband announced his candidacy for the presidency; he criticized Wal-Mart labor policies at an AFL–CIO forum in Trenton, New Jersey, on May 14, 2007.^[85] She also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.^[86]

In 2021, the former first lady announced that she had been “moving toward retirement”.^[87] Though she continues to be active in political campaigns, the former first lady has said she is reducing the amount of work to spend more time with her husband.^[87]

During an interview in 1996, Michelle Obama acknowledged there was a “strong possibility” her husband would begin a political career, but said she was “wary” of the process. She knew it meant their lives would be subject to scrutiny and she was intensely private.^[88]

Although she campaigned on her husband’s behalf since early in his political career by handshaking and fund-raising, she did not relish the activity at first. When she campaigned during her husband’s 2000 run for United States House of Representatives, her boss at the University of Chicago asked if there was any single thing about campaigning that she enjoyed. After some thought, she replied that visiting so many living rooms had given her some new decorating ideas.^[89][90] Obama opposed her husband’s run for the congressional seat, and, after his defeat, she preferred he tend to the financial needs of the family in what she deemed a more practical way.^[91]

At first, Obama had reservations about her husband’s presidential campaign, due to fears about a possible negative effect on their daughters.^[92] She says that she negotiated an agreement in which her husband was to quit smoking in exchange for her support of his decision to run.^[93] About her role in her husband’s presidential campaign, she has said: “My job is not a senior advisor”.^[65][94][95] During the campaign, she discussed race and education by using motherhood as a framework.^[42]

In May 2007, three months after her husband declared his presidential candidacy, Obama reduced her professional responsibilities by 80 percent to support his presidential campaign.^[18] Early in the campaign, she had limited involvement, traveling to political events only two days a week and rarely traveling overnight;^[96] by early February 2008, her participation had increased significantly. She attended thirty-three events in eight days.^[66] She made several campaign appearances with Oprah Winfrey.^[97][98] She wrote her own stump speeches for her husband’s presidential campaign and generally spoke without notes.^[26]

During the campaign, columnist Cal Thomas on Fox News described Michelle Obama as an “Angry Black Woman“^{[99][100][101]} and some websites attempted to promote this image.^[102] Obama said: “Barack and I have been in the public eye for many years now, and we’ve developed a thick skin along the way. When you’re out campaigning, there will always be criticism. I just take it in stride, and at the end of the day, I know that it comes with the territory.”^[103]

By the time of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in August, media outlets observed that her presence on the campaign trail had grown softer than at the start of the race, focusing on soliciting concerns and empathizing with the audience rather than throwing down challenges to them, and giving interviews to shows such as The View and publications like Ladies’ Home Journal rather than