Rhonda Byrne

Rhonda Byrne is an Australian television writer and producer, born Rhonda Izon in 1951 in Melbourne, Australia, to Ronald and Irene Izon. Before she became widely known as an author, she worked in television as an executive producer. Her credits included Oz Encounters: UFO's in Australia in 1997, Sensing Murder: Easy Street in 2003, Loves Me, Loves Me Not in 2003, and The World's Greatest Commercials, which ran from 1995 to 2004. Her early public career belonged to the world of television production, where ideas had to be shaped for audiences and presented with clarity.

Byrne is best known for The Secret, a book and film based on the pseudoscientific belief known as the law of attraction. That belief claims that thoughts can directly change a person’s life. The Secret was published in 2006, and it quickly became a major commercial success. By the spring of 2007, the book had sold more than 19 million copies in more than 40 languages, along with more than two million DVDs. Together, the book and film grossed $300 million.

The circumstances that led Byrne to The Secret were personal. After the death of her father in 2004, she became very depressed. At the urging of her daughter Hayley, she read The Science of Getting Rich, a 1910 book by Wallace D. Wattles. From there, Byrne began work on The Secret. In her account of the idea, she claimed that great men in history knew about the law of attraction, naming Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig van Beethoven, Winston Churchill, and others. She also pointed to current proponents of the idea, including Jack Canfield, Michael Beckwith, James Arthur Ray, Joseph Vitale, and John Gray.

The success of The Secret brought Byrne into a much larger public arena. In 2007, she was featured in Time magazine’s TIME 100: The Most Influential People. She also gained mainstream popularity and commercial success after appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show. For many readers and viewers, her work arrived as a simple message about thought, desire, and change, packaged in a form that was easy to share and discuss.

Byrne continued to build on the same themes in later books. After answering several thousand letters from readers of The Secret, she wrote a sequel, The Power, which was published on 17 August 2010 as both a hardcover edition and an audio CD. In 2012, she published The Magic. Her other published works include Hero in 2013, How The Secret Changed My Life in 2016, and The Greatest Secret in 2020. Her words still resonate with readers who are drawn to direct, confident statements about intention, belief, and keeping one’s plans close until the work is done.