'World's ugliest woman' fights back and becomes one of world's inspirational leaders

Few of us have a bullying story that matches Lizzie Velasquez.

Born with Marfan syndrome – a rare condition preventing her from accumulating fat – she never knew how different she was until she reached her late teens when she came across a YouTube video labelling her world's ugliest woman.

Mean cyberbullies called her a monster and said she should have been aborted at birth. It changed her life forever.

But courageously she faced their taunts and decided to fight back in an extraordinary way by becoming an inspirational motivational speaker for bullying victims across the globe.

"Am I going to 'let kill it with fire' define me," is one of her opening lines in her documentary The Brave Heart, which launched in March.

Speaking at the National Achievers Congress in Malaysia, the 26-year-old from Texas, said: "It's my face on the big screen, but it is about everyone else's story. I hope when people see it, they can relate to it, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. When I was younger, I didn't see that light."

She was accompanied by her parents Rita Velasquez and Guadalupe Velasquez and The Brave Heart director Sara Hirsh Bordo.

"I think one of the biggest things, in all of the places I have been to, is that in every place the people have one thing in common," she told the local press.

"We all have gone through some hardships at some point in our lives, and meeting so many different people and cultures and different ages, all of us connect in one way or another on the things we have gone through."

She has also written two inspirational books for teenagers, Be Beautiful, Be You (2012) about recognising their unique gifts and Choosing Happiness (2014) about getting over obstacles.