A prospective analysis for the discovery of a light Higgs boson in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is presented. The associated production channels WH and ZH of a Higgs boson decaying into a photon pair are studied using a full detector simulation. The method of analysis here employed should permit the utilization of real data once they become available in order to optimize the analysis performance and to estimate background rates. Minimizing in this way reliance on simulated data should allow a significant reduction in systematic errors. One year of LHC running at high luminosity (integrated luminosity of 100 fb-1) should allow an observation at 3σ of the Standard Model Higgs boson from the LEP lower limit of 114.4 GeV/c2 up to 146 GeV/c2. Three years of running at high luminosity should allow a 5σ discovery from the LEP lower limit up to 148 GeV/c2. In the context of supersymmetric models, the dominant gluon fusion Higgs boson production process could be strongly suppressed. This light Higgs gluophobic scenario could occur when the mixing in the stop sector is maximal. In such a case, the associated production channels WH and ZH may be recovery channels.