Yeah, I've actually tried that. It wasn't returning the text in the regex. I went a different route and got a working code. Thanks for you help, though, it gave me my starting point.
PHP Code:
$pattern = htmlspecialchars('/(>.*)/');
$replacement = '<span style="color:#789922">$1</span>';
$this->post['message'] = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $this->post['message']);