Jumping onto journalism's fast track in 1974, British-born Tina Brown (Christina Hambly Brown, born 1953) transformed the English magazine Tatler , then the U.S. magazines Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, using controversial topics and challenging images. Her editorial rabbit punches knocked all three magazines into top-seller realm by boosting circulation, ad revenues, and reader interest.

Assuming the post of editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair magazine in 1984, Tina Brown, formerly with Britain's Tatler, delighted both skeptics and devotees. Vanity Fair, an art and literary magazine popular before World War II, had been reintroduced in 1983 by publisher S.I. Newhouse, Jr., but suffered from weak editorial focus and limp enthusiasm among media critics. As editor, Brown employed a saucy cleverness to both tighten that focus and rouse apathetic critics.

Born in Maidenhead, England, on November 21, 1953, Christina Hambly Brown and her brother, Christopher, were raised by George Hambly Brown and Bettina (Kohr) Brown...