The daughter of notorious music promoter/manager Don Arden, whose dubious parenting skills she would later castigate in a revealing autobiography, Sharon Levy carved out a career as a music manager and promoter that would ultimately lead her to even greater success than her father. She began working for her father as a teenager and met her future husband Ozzy Osbourne while his band, the bestselling heavy metal act Black Sabbath, was still under Arden’s management. She assumed control of Osbourne’s career in the early 80s and helped guide him to solo stardom, a feat all the more impressive considering the singer’s drug and alcohol addled state at the time. Osbourne was also instrumental in launching Ozzfest, a summer touring festival that remains one of America’s leading rock shows, celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2006. She has also worked with Coal Chamber, ELO, Gary Moore, Motörhead, and the Smashing Pumpkins, displaying a similar determined streak of management that typified her father’s career.

Osbourne’s media profile intensified after the 2002 launch of the MTV reality show The Osbournes, in which her family’s dysfunctional daily life in Beverly Hills was revealed in all its gory detail on national television. The record viewing figures for the show, which ran for four seasons, helped propel the Osbournes into mega-celebrity status. Remarkably, she was battling colon cancer while the initial series of the show were filming. In the wake of The Osbournes, she was seen on her own talk show and as a judge on the reality television talent shows The X Factor and America’s Got Talent. Her 2005 autobiography Extreme was a number 1 bestseller on the UK book charts.