Xuxa

Her paternal great-great-grandfather (Ettore Meneghel) emigrated to Brazil at the end of the 1800s from the northern Italian town of Cison di Valmarino, in the region of Veneto.

Maria da Graça Xuxa Meneghel (born Maria da Graça Meneghel, 27 March 1963) is a Brazilian presenter, actress, singer and businesswoman.

Known as the "queen of the short ones", Xuxa built the largest Latin and Southern American children's entertainment empire.

In 1984, she was hired as a model by Ford Models.

Xuxa started a career in television through an offer to host a small regional children's program, Clube da Criança for Rede Manchete.

In this period, she worked as a model during the week in New York City and taped her show during the weekend in Brazil.

In 1986 this opportunity was expanded when she received an offer to host a national children's program through the multimedia conglomerate Globo.

On 30 June 1986, Xou da Xuxa debuted on TV Globo.

In Christmas 1986, Xuxa received her eighth platinum record, a prize awarded to every 250,000 copies sold.

The album Xou da Xuxa, from the record company Som Livre, had sold more than two million copies, achieving by then the South American record for a single album.

Xuxa sold more than Brazilian singer Roberto Carlos that year.

In the following years, the presenter still released six more albums of the series, such as Xou da Xuxa 2 and 3, which established themselves as the best-selling albums in Brazil, with 2.7 and 3.3 million copies sold, respectively.

With the recorded songs, it left in tours by Brazil that were seen by millions of people.

In 1987, the French newspaper Libération included Xuxa in the list of 10 women of prominence on the planet, next to the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

The nickname stuck, though it was not until 1988 that she officially changed her name to Maria da Graça Xuxa Meneghel.

Xuxa spent her early years in her hometown Santa Rosa.

When she was seven, she and her family moved to Rio de Janeiro where they lived in the Bento Ribeiro neighborhood.

At 15 years old, she was discovered by a modeling agency, and began her professional career as a model at 16.

During this time period Xuxa modeled in Brazil and the United States for both fashion and men's magazines, such as Playboy, and began an affair with Brazilian footballer Pelé.

In parallel to the Xou da Xuxa, the presenter commanded Bobeou Dançou, between 9 July and 31 December 1989, on Sunday afternoons of TV Globo.

Initially created as Xou of Xuxa frame, it was so successful that the station decided to launch it as an independent program aimed at the adolescent public.

The Bobeou Dançou was a program of rumba based on riddles with two teams formed by adolescents between 13 and 17 years disputed the first place of the competition.

In the early 1990s, she presented television programs in Brazil, Argentina, Spain and the United States simultaneously, reaching around 100 million viewers daily.

Xuxa has sold over 30 million copies of her records worldwide, which makes her the highest-selling Brazilian female singer.

Her net worth was estimated at US$100 million in the early 1990s.

Also successful as a businesswoman, she has the highest net worth of any Brazilian female entertainer, estimated at US$400 million.

Maria da Graça Meneghel was born in Santa Rosa, Rio Grande do Sul, to Luís Floriano Meneghel and Alda Meneghel (née Alda Flores da Rocha).

Xuxa is of Italian and Polish descent by paternal side and of German, Swiss and Portuguese descent by maternal side.

In 1990, the film Lua de Cristal, Xuxa's biggest box office hit, sold 4,178 million tickets and ranked 21st in the ranking of most-watched national films from 1970 to 2011 according to Ancine (Agência Nacional do Cinema).

Xuxa accumulated the highest-grossing of Brazilian cinema, with more than 37 million people watched her films.

It aired in the mornings from Monday to Saturday until its final episode on 31 December 1992, after some 2,000 episodes.

Xuxa would usually enter on a pink ship, which awakened in the children the dream of flying beside her.

Children from all over Brazil ran to have breakfast with the song "Quem Qué Pão?" She would end the show with the famous "Xuxa kiss", where she would put on bright lipstick and kiss the children onstage with her and children in the audience on the cheek, leaving a mark.

In addition to entertainment, she also aired positive messages to the public, such as "Want, Power and Reach!", "Believe in Dreams" and "Drugs do Bad".

In the same period, Xuxa began a relationship with the Brazilian Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna, who died in 1994.

In 2013, Xuxa obtained Italian citizenship by descent.

During Xuxa's birth, her father was told that both mother and child were at risk.

He opted to save his wife, and prayed to Our Lady of Graces, promising to name his daughter after the Blessed Virgin Mary if all went well.

Although she was named for the Virgin as promised, Xuxa, the youngest member of the Meneghel family, received her famous nickname from her brother, Bladimir.

When their mother arrived home with the baby, she said to him: "Look at the baby that I bought to play with you," he replied: "I know, it's my Xuxa."