center of attention --it is an idiom based on the dictionary

she was always the centre of attention--  might be an option? 

 

center of attention --the focus of people's attention; the thing or person who monopolizes people's attention. She had a way of making herself the center of attention wherever she went.

 

I think language is an interesting thing that we can play with in so many different ways, for example, in our daily life or in our writing we can innuendo, mock, satirize, attack,  compliment, and being ambiguous to people if we are brave enough to do so, expecially in the daily life if we don't mind people get right back to us. Oh,maybe to compliment we don't have to have the guts,but what we need to do is to horn our lip service skills.