This is an old question, but I want to make a point clear:
Yes, the present perfect is used all the time, by native English speakers, in all registers and dialects of English, from extremely informal to very formal. You cannot sound like a native English speaker without using it when it is called for. (It's not like, say, knowing how to use "whom," which you don't really have to do.)
The good news is that, in a lot of places, the two are interchangeable. Moreover, you are likely to use the past more. Also, using the present perfect in the wrong place will sound very strange and sometimes make you unintelligible, whereas using the past in the wrong place may communicate the wrong shade of meaning but will rarely get your listener completely lost. Therefore, I recommend using the past most of the time, then inserting the perfect gradually if you are sure you are right.
To make sure I wasn't wrong, I turned on the TV now to a sitcom rerun. Ignoring other tenses (mostly present) here is my tally in ten minutes or so:
past 31
present perfect 4
and some other past tense constructions:
"lately, I have been having thoughts"
"I think that may have missed the table."
"oh God, I shouldn't have said anything"
"he kept laughing at..."
It is perfectly natural to use the past perfect in she had grown up. The past perfect summarizes all that came before in her life, even if this was a process, up to the moment in time that the narrator utters those four words.
What is awkward is to link "she had grown up" with verbs that are not in the past perfect. Thus, both
She had grown up, and it was said that she became a barmaid, kind and generous.
and
She had grown up and became a barmaid, kind and generous.
do not link with precision the clause she had grown up with the actions of the rest of the sentence. The second version is especially jarring. I can hear an almost audible clank when I read that sentence. To take full advantage of the conjoining nature of and, both actions will be cast in the past perfect:
She had grown up and (had) become a barmaid...
The first sentence is not as bad, probably because the intervening narrative and it was said that (or even the active and people said) connects she became a barmaid in some nebulous time relationship to she had grown up. The only thing we know about when the entirety of and it was said that she became a barmaid is that it is after the moment expressed by she had grown up. But years, decades could have transpired in between. Thus, unless one enjoys living in such a nebula, even the first sentence can be tightened by using the past perfect: and it was said that she had become.
Best Answer
Proper is: Yesterday was the best day of my life. When you experience a better day than yesterday, you will say Yesterday had been the best day of my life. The fact that something about the past remains true today is not germane: George Washington was the first president of the United States. That he was the first is still true, and it will always be true. But he achieved this distinction in the past and the simple past tense is meant exactly for that--to describe an action or situation that occurred in the past.