Rhonda Eva Harris was born on 13 September 1953 in Brooklyn, New York City USA, of part-Nigerian descent, and now as Iyanla Vanzant is a motivational speaker, author, lawyer, television personality and a spiritual teacher , best known for her TV talk show “Iyanla: Fix My Life”, and through her numerous publications.
So just how rich is Iyanla Vanzanas, as of late 2017? Authoritative sources have estimated that her net worth is over $500,000, accumulated from her various activities during a career which began in the early 1980s.
Iyanla Vanzant Net Worth $500,000
Iyanla’s mother died from cancer when she was four, and her father’s job meant he was absent for much of the time, so she was raised by paternal relatives, who were somewhat abusive. She attended Virginia Union College and Medgar Evers College, and ultimately graduated with a Juris Doctor degree from the City University of New York School of Law. She got her title “Iyanla“, which means “great mother“ after she was ordained as a Yoruba priestess. She was subsequently recognized by Ebony Magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential Black Americans in 2000, and Watkins‘ Mind Body Spirit magazine included her in the list of the 100 most spiritually influential living people in 2012.
Iyanla is best known for her self-help books, the first of which – “A Path to Self Empowerment to Black Women’ – was published in 1988 and largely documented her own struggle to that point. She has published over 20 books since, and they comprise her main source of income. In 1997 she published three titles, and after that she released at least one book, but most of the time more than that, every year from 1998 to 2003. Her next book, “Tapping the Power Within: A Path to Self-Empowerment for Women” was published in 2008, while her latest two books, “A Woman Knows Things” and “Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through” came out in 2010.
As for her TV career, her first appearance as a guest was on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1998, since when Oprah Winfrey has been a close friend of Iyanla‘s, and she appeared frequently on “Oprah”. In 1999 she was also invited to “The Chris Rock Show”, and in 2000 she appeared in “The Robbing Hood” episode of “Moesha”, In 2008 she was in “The Salt-N-Pepa Show”, and appeared in a bunch of shows over the next few years, including “Katie”, “Anderson Live”, “Super Soul Sunday” and “Joy Behar: Say Anything!”.
Besides guest appearances, Iyanla has also hosted or played a recurring role in a few shows that also influenced her net worth in a major way. First she hosted a namesake show called “Iyanla” that ran for a year from 2001 to 2002, then appeared for two seasons in “Starting Over” as a life coach from 2004 to 2006. Most recently she‘s a lifestyle class teacher in “Oprah‘s Lifeclass” since 2011, and has been hosting “Iyanla, Fix My Life” from 2012: both of these shows are ongoing.
In her personal life, Iyanla had her first daughter when she was 16, then married Kirk in 1971 a marriage which lasted a year. She married Charles Vanzant in 1973, but the abusive relationship ended in divorce in 1979, after two children, one of whom died in 2003 from cancer. She married Adeyemi Bandele in 1997, but they divorced in 2007. She currently lives in Maryland.
