Condoleezza Rice

She never married and does not have any children.

She was born as the only child of Angelena and John Wesley Rice, Jr. Her mother was a high school teacher while her father was a high school guidance counselor and Presbyterian minister. She was raised in a racially segregated section of Alabama.

She began to learn music and ballet at the age of three. As a teenager, she received piano lessons and aimed to become a concert pianist.

She attended St. Mary’s Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school and graduated in 1971.

She studied piano at the Aspen Music Festival and School before enrolling at the University of Denver. While there she realized that she was not talented enough to be a professional pianist and instead chose to study a course on international politics taught by Josef Korbel. She earned her B.A., cum laude, in political science in 1974.

She then went to the University of Notre Dame from where she received her master’s degree in political science in 1975. She completed her Ph.D. in political science from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.

She was appointed as an assistant professor of political science in the Stanford University in 1981 and was promoted to associate professor in 1987. She held this post till 1993.

During the late 1980s she became the Soviet expert on the United States National Security Council under Brent Scowcroft who was the National Security Advisor.

She was a very intelligent and determined young woman and was made the Provost of Stanford University in 1993, making her the first female and the youngest Provost in Stanford history. In this post she was responsible for managing the university's multi-billion dollar budget.

She took a one-year leave of absence from Stanford University to help George Bush as a foreign policy advisor during his 2000 presidential election campaign.

She was made the National Security Advisor in December 2000. She left Stanford to accept this position. She helped Bush craft race-based preferences in university admission policies.

She served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States from January 2005 to January 2009—the first African American woman to hold the post. She is famous for pioneering the policy of Transformational Diplomacy aimed at bringing about democratic reforms in countries especially in the Greater Middle East.