How birthday girl Malia Obama’s growing away from her famous family’s shadow

Happy birthday Malia Obama! The former first daughter turned 28 on Saturday, July 4.

Her parents, Barack and Michelle Obama celebrated their oldest on Instagram. The 44th President of the United States shared a sweet throwback photo of Malia with his 42.4 million followers.

“Happy Birthday, Malia! Don’t know where the time goes – but the joy of having you as a daughter never gets old,” he wrote.

For Michelle’s tribute to Malia, she shared a playful boomerang of her, the birthday girl, and her other daughter Sasha Obama, 25. In the short clip, Michelle wore a pink bucket hat, a denim jacket, a brown tank top, and brown pants. Malia wore a cropped white top and low rise jeans while Sasha wore a flowy white mini dress.

She captioned the post: “Happy birthday, Malia! You bring so much light and energy into the world with everything you do. Your dad and I are so proud of the woman you’ve become.”

Throughout Malia’s childhood, Barack and Michelle worked hard to keep her out of the spotlight.

“They had to drive and they had to go to prom and they were on teams and they traveled to other schools and they had to do college searches,” the former first lady explained on SiriusXM’s Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa. 

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She continued: “They went to parties and they had drinks, and they tried out smoking and they did all the things—and every weekend was a nightmare, because we had to work to make sure that them being regular teenagers didn’t wind up on Page Six.”

It seems that hard work from her parents paid off, as the now 28-year-old enjoys her private life.

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What does Malia Obama do for work?

Malia is a budding filmmaker, who previously worked as a writer on the Donald Glover series Swarm, and later made her directorial debut in the 2023 short film The Heart. In May 2025, she directed a pair of vignettes posted to social media ahead of the release of WNBA star A’ja Wilson’s shoe launch.

For The Heart, Malia opted to drop her famous last name. But, she added it back in for her Nike commercials. Both her parents are proud of her creativity, but acknowledge the hard work that comes with the high expectations around her last name. 

In October 2024, Barack shared on The Pivot Podcast his daughters struggle to accept help from their parents.  

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“The challenge for us is letting us give them any help at all,” the former president said. “I mean, they’re very sensitive about this stuff. They’re very stubborn about it.”

“I was all like, ‘You do know they’ll know who you are,'” he said of Malia. “And she’s all like, ‘You know what? I want them to watch it that first time and not in any way have that association.’ So I think our daughters go out of their way to not try to leverage that.”