She has said she has no interest in a White House policy role. She has expressed an interest in helping military families, though she does not hail from one.
Her father, Fraser Robinson, who was stricken with multiple sclerosis when she was young, worked as a pump operator for the Chicago water department. Her mother, Marian, who is expected to move with the Obamas into the White House, did not work outside the home while her children were growing up.
Michelle Obama's only sibling, Craig Robinson, who recently became head basketball coach at Oregon State University, was recruited by Princeton to play basketball. Michelle followed her big brother there. Princeton was an eye-opener for the high-achieving girl from Chicago's South Side. As she wrote in her senior thesis, "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before."
When she decided to apply to Harvard Law School, she didn't get wholehearted support, she told the church audience in South Carolina. "My thesis advisor said, 'Well, you're smart, but you're maybe not the brightest thing I've seen coming out the blocks.' And I said, 'Oh, really?' "
She graduated from Harvard law in 1988 and went to work for a Chicago law firm, Sidley & Austin, specializing in intellectual property law. When Obama arrived as a summer intern, she was assigned to supervise him. She already knew who he was -- she'd heard about this good-looking guy who had become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, and was curious. But she didn't think she should date him, given their work relationship. He pushed it, though, and won.
In 1992, they were married at Trinity United Church of Christ by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who would later become a controversial figure in the campaign.
After a few years, Michelle grew unhappy practicing corporate law and left for a job in the administration of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. In 2002, shortly after the Obamas' second daughter was born, she went to work at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she eventually became vice president for community and external affairs.
Caught without a sitter, she had schlepped the baby with her to the job interview.
"She really wanted to make that known to me," Michael C. Riordan, president and chief executive of the medical center, said last year. "Family came first."
