Maya Angelou, the woman who transformed a difficult childhood into an adulthood full of success, respect and lasting influence, has died at the age of 86.

Her death was confirmed in a statement issued on Wednesday by Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she had served as a professor of American Studies since 1982.

Angelou was one of the first black women to enjoy mainstream success as an author and thrived in virtually every artistic medium.

The childhood victim of rape wrote a million-selling memoir, befriended Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr, and performed on stages around the world.

An actress, singer and dancer in the 1950s and 1960s, she broke through as an author in 1970 with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which became standard (and occasionally censored) reading, and was the first of a multipart autobiography that continued through the decades.

The young single mother who performed at strip clubs to earn a living later wrote and recited the most popular presidential inaugural poem in history.

In 1993, she was a sensation reading her cautiously hopeful On the Pulse of the Morning at former President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration.

Her confident performance openly delighted Clinton and made the poem a best-seller, if not a critical favourite.

In a statement following her death, Clinton reflected on Angelou’s influence.

“The poems and stories she wrote and read to us in her commanding voice were gifts of wisdom and wit, courage and grace,” he said.

“I will always be grateful for her electrifying reading of On the Pulse of Morning at my first inaugural, and even more for all the years of friendship that followed.”

For former President George W Bush, she read another poem, Amazing Peace, at the 2005 Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the White House.

‘I am woman phenomenally. Phenomenally woman, that’s me’. Maya Angelou

— Emma Watson (@EmWatson) May 28, 2014

She remained close enough to the Clintons that in 2008 she supported Hillary Clinton’s candidacy over the ultimately successful run of the country’s first black president, Barack Obama. But a few days before Obama’s inauguration, she was clearly overjoyed. She told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette she would be watching it on television “somewhere between crying and praying and being grateful and laughing when I see faces I know”.

“Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.” —Maya Angelou pic.twitter.com/oR11k7rwxk — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 28, 2014

She was a mentor to Oprah Winfrey, whom she befriended when Winfrey was still a local television reporter, and often appeared on her friend’s talk show program.

She mastered several languages and published not just poetry, but advice books, cookbooks and children’s stories.

Today the world lost one of it’s greatest gifts. I’m sending love to the friends and family of Maya Angelou.

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) May 28, 2014

She wrote music, plays and screenplays, received an Emmy nomination for her acting in Roots, and never lost her passion for dance, the art she considered closest to poetry.

One of her most-quoted musings rings true after her passing: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

-with AAP