Malia Obama may no longer be the daughter of the US President but she is still having to cope with determined fans.

The 19-year-old has just started at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her father Barack and mother Michelle studied law.

She was with a friend in Harvard Square when she was approached by a stranger who asked for a photograph for her grandchild, TMZ reported.

Ms Obama declined “politely”, according to the celebrity news website, and went into a salad shop.

However when she emerged from the shop, she discovered the woman had waited for her outside and was simply going to take the picture without permission.

“Are you gonna take it in my face like an animal in a cage?” she says in a video of the encounter which appeared to have been taken by a third person.

The woman replies, “no, I need to take a …” and then the video cuts off.

An eyewitness told TMZ that Ms Obama relented and allowed the woman to get a picture.

Ms Obama was 10 when her father first became US President.

After leaving Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC, she took a gap year before starting her studies at Harvard.