Long before Presidentt Barack Obama made national headlines, Michelle Robinson was a shining star herself.

Michelle Obama Greets DNC: Slideshow | Transcript

However, despite her impressive character and intelligence, Michelle chose a life outside of society's limelight.

Her impressive resume, combined with her history-making husband, has transformed her life from the preferred shadows to the attention of the world.

Standing Out

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama was born Jan. 17, 1964, on Chicago's South Side to Frasier and Marian Robinson.

Frasier was a city pump operator and a Democratic precinct captain, and Marian worked as a Spiegel's catalog store secretary as they started their life together.

As a family, they lived in a one-bedroom apartment where Michelle shared a bedroom -- the living room with a curtain divider -- with her brother, Craig Robinson, who is 16 months her senior.

Early on in life, Michelle stood out among the crowd.

"As far back as any of us can remember, she was very bright," Craig Robinson told Newsweek.

Michelle skipped second grade and eventually joined a gifted sixth-grade class at Bouchet Elementary School, where she graduated as class salutatorian. Then she went on to Kennedy King College, where Michelle took two years of special biology classes. Classwork included studying photosynthesis, working in a laboratory and identifying the muscles of dissected rat specimens, recalled childhood friend Chiaka Davis Patterson.

"This is not what normal seventh-graders were getting," Patterson told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Michelle was part of a handpicked group of students selected for the well-known Whitney Young High School in Chicago, just three years after it opened in 1975. At Whitney Young, Michelle made the honor roll all four years, took advanced placement classes, and was in the National Honor Society. She was also the student council treasurer and a member of the fundraising publicity committee.

Michelle continued to stand out -- and not just because she was among the tallest girls in her class at 5 feet 11 inches, said classmate Norm Collins.

She seemed to conquer everything "effortlessly," he told Newsweek.

On the surface, Michelle seemed to excel easily, but she was a hard worker, her brother said.

This habit continued throughout her education, allowing her to excel at Princeton, where she majored in sociology and graduated cum laude in 1985.

"She was not a procrastinator," Angela Acree, Michelle's roommate, told the Chicago Sun-Times. "Michelle would always get her work done in advance so she was not sitting there facing some deadline the next day."

Aware Of 'Blackness'

Although she excelled among her white peers, her experiences at Princeton made her more aware of her black American status and the treatment she received for the color of her skin.

"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," Michelle wrote in a 1985 thesis titled "Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community."

"Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second," she wrote.

'Incredible Presence' At Harvard Law

Michelle entered Harvard Law School and continued to impress fellow students and professors with her intelligence and drive. Her classmate, Verna Williams, compared Michelle to the admirable characteristics of her publicized husband, Barack.

"She has incredible presence," Williams told the Chicago Sun-Times. "She could very easily be the Sen. Obama that people are talking about. She's very, very smart, very charismatic, very well spoken -- all the things that Barack is."

Although her intelligence and academic accomplishments made her stand out, she rejected a life in the limelight and worked to serve the underprivileged and underrepresented. Michelle worked with Legal Aid clients and recruited black Harvard Law alumni to serve on Black Law Student Association panels until she graduated with her degree in 1988.

Her professor at Harvard, Charles Ogletree, told Newsweek, "Michelle put her energy into a less glamorous pursuit: recruiting black undergrads to Harvard Law from other schools. For her, politics wasn't so much about being inspirational as it was being practical-about getting something specific done. She was not trying to get ahead."

After graduation, Michelle joined Chicago's Sidley & Austin law firm, specializing in marketing and intellectual property, wrote the Chicago Sun-Times.

Tough Love

In her first year at Sidley & Austin, she met Barack Obama. He entered the company as an intern and was assigned to work with the young summer associate's adviser, Michelle.

"I remember that she was tall -- almost my height in heels -- and lovely, with a friendly, professional manner," Obama recalls in his book, "Audacity of Hope."

Michelle tried to set Obama up with her friends, but he always refused and wanted to take her out. Finally, she relented and the couple married four years later in 1992 at the Trinity United Church of Christ.

Advancing Career

In 1991, Michelle worked as an assistant in the chief of staff's office of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. She continued to spread her positive and notable reputation in her actions and methods of communication.

"I've been in so many settings or meetings with Michelle where people are talking all around an issue, and she has a way of succinctly getting to the issue and putting it on the table. She's willing to say what other people dance around," Valerie Jarrett, the mayor's deputy chief of staff at the time, told the Chicago Sun-Times.

In 1993, Michelle grabbed an offer to be part of then-President Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps effort as the founding executive director of the Chicago office of Public Allies. In the position, she created an office and a board of directors, and raised money to help young people enter public service.

Michelle created a template for 11 other offices and left a one-year reserve of money, which none of the other sites since has had, Paul Schmitz, national Public Allies CEO, told the Chicago Sun-Times.

By 1996, the University of Chicago offered her a job as associate dean of students that extended Michelle's work with volunteerism. As director of the University Community Service Center, she located and supported the volunteer work of students.

Wanting To Be A Mom

As a young adult, children were "all (Michelle) wanted," close friend and consultant Yvonne Davila told the Chicago Sun-Times.

In 1998, Barack and Michelle had their first child, Malia Ann. Their second child, Natasha, was born in 2001.

"She's a family person first," Davila said. With kids, "she gives lots of love, but at same time, there's no nonsense."

'Nothing Too Hard'

In 2002, then-University of Chicago Hospitals President Michael Riordan offered Michelle a job as the hospital's executive director of community affairs, serving as liaison between the institution and its surrounding community of rich and poor.

Michelle was promoted in 2005 to vice president of external affairs and community relations, while her husband was sworn in as a U.S. senator.

By then, among other things, Michelle had expanded a two-person part-time office to a staff of 17, grown the number of volunteers at the hospital from 200 to nearly 1,000, and quadrupled the number of hospital employees who volunteered outside the hospital to 800, officials told the Chicago Sun-Times.

After Barack announced his presidential bid, Michelle reduced her professional responsibilities to support her husband.

She now juggles the demands of the campaign, motherhood and her marriage. Her top priority, however, is her two daughters.

"Her commitment is 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," explained Mayor Bill Bogaard to the Pasadena Weekly, after Michelle made a private speech.

Whatever happens, Michelle will find a way to make it all work, said Craig Robinson.

"There's nothing too hard for her to do," he told the Chicago Sun-Times.