Tina Brown

British-American editor known as irreverent, witty, sophisticated and bright. She grew up outside of London with a dad and older brother who are film producers, and a mom who was gossip columnist Bettina Brown. She and her older brother, Christopher, grew up in an upper-middle-class family in Little Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, on the outskirts of London. An angelic little girl, at parties she could always be found sitting on the lap of the most important man in the room. She was a shy, observant child, pretty, funny, feminine and an instigator. By 16, she had been expelled from three schools.

While reading English at Oxford, she won the Sunday times Drama Award in 1973. In 1978, Brown was named Britain's Young Journalist of the Year. She was the youngest editor in London at 25 when she took over "The Tatler" in June 1979, a stilted upper-class publication that she converted into a gossipy monthly. Her sorcery metamorphosed the Tatler "from a jowly dowager into a flirty stunner."

On 1 Januar 1984, Brown was hired as editor of "Vanity Fair" in New York City. With a definitive editorial stance, she aided in the success of the magazine, increasing circulation 400% in two years. She was named Magazine Editor of the Year in 1988. Her success has been attributed to her creative drive plus a clairvoyant sense of timing that borders on crystal-ball prescience.

She moved in with Harold Evans, 50, in 1978 (after first meeting four years prior); they married on 20 August 1981. Their courtship had begun in London when he was editor of the Sunday Times, winning awards for disclosure on thalidomide, and she was editor of the Tatler. She told a reporter, "My God, I was in love immediately. He was the sexy editor of all time . . . the Nijinsky of newsprint." They planned to move to America in 1984 so that he could teach at Duke University. Then Tina was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair.