# List of women in the Heritage Floor

This list documents all 998 mythical, historical and notable women whose names are displayed on the handmade white tiles of the Heritage Floor as part of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party art installation (1979); there is also one man listed, Kresilas, who was mistakenly included in the installation as he was thought to have been a woman called Cresilla. The names appear as they are spelled on the floor. Since 2007 the installation has been on permanent exhibition in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
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* W–Z
* Notes
* References
    This is a sortable list. Click on the column headers to reorder.
| Name | Birthdate | Location | Group (Related Place Setting) | Notes |
| Abella of Salerno | Flourished c. 1350 | Salerno, Italy | Trotula | Taught general medicine at Schola Medica Salernitana, the earliest medical school in Europe. She specialised in embryology, and published two treatises. |
| Abigail | Flourished c. 965 BC | Ancient Israel | Judith | Earliest female pacifist in biblical record. Her husband defied the future King David and to avoid war, she went behind her husband's back and prepared food for David, in order to keep the peace. Her husband died from the shock of her actions, and she would go on to become the third wife of David. |
| Abigail Adams | 1744 | Massachusetts, United States | Anne Hutchinson | Abolitionist, women's education advocate, influential political figure. |
| Adela of Blois | c. 1067 | France | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Filled as regent while her husband, Stephen Henry, participated in the First Crusade. |
| Adela Zamudio-Ribero | 1854 | Cochabamba, Bolivia | Virginia Woolf | Poet, intellectual and founder of the Bolivian feminist movement. |
| Adelaide | 931 | France | Theodora | Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. |
| Adelaide Labille-Guiard | 1749 | France | Artemisia Gentileschi | Portrait painter, member of the Académie Royale, women's education advocate. |
| Adelaide of Susa | c. 1016 | Italy | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Philanthropist, heiress, countess of Savoy. She also led an army to defend Turin. |
| Adelperga | 8th century | Italy | Trotula | Lombard princess, known for fighting against Charlemagne. Incorrectly identified as a lay healer named Adelberger due to a passage in Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead's History of Women in Medicine. |
| Adelheid Popp | 1869 | Vienna, Austria | Susan B. Anthony | Leader of the Austrian Socialist Women's Movement, served in Austrian government. |
| Eudocia | c. 400 | Athens; Jerusalem | Theodora | Philanthropist, politician, poet, was an Orthodox Christian who fought for the protection of Jews and pagans |
| Eudoxia | 380 | Constantinople | Theodora | Empress of Byzantium who influenced the political work of her husband, Emperor Arcadius. |
| Aemilia | c. 300 | Gaul | Hypatia | Poet and physician, rejected marriage as it was a hindrance to her career. Wrote books about gynecology and obstetrics. |
| Æthelburg | c. 673 | England | Theodora | Queen of Wessex alongside husband King Ine of Wessex. Fought battles alongside Ine. In 728 they relinquished the crown to her brother and lived amongst the poor in Rome. |
| Ethelberga | 5th Century | England | Hrosvitha | Duplicate entry for Bertha of Kent, as shown by the death date on her Heritage Panel. Identified as a separate person due to a passage in Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead's History of Women in Medicine, where she is conflated with both Æthelburh of Kent and Æthelburh of Barking. |
| Æthelflæd | 869 | England | Theodora | Led troops against the Vikings. After her husband, Æthelred died, she became the sole ruler of Mercia. |
| Agatha | c. 235 | Sicily | Hypatia | Rejected the advances of Roman military officials and was tortured by having her breasts cut off, then, she was sentenced to burn at the stake but was saved by an earthquake. She died in prison and was canonized by the Church. She is the patron saint of breast cancer patients. |
| Ageltrude Benevento | 9th century | Italy | Trotula | Holy Roman Empress. Used her political power to have her son, Lambert, confirmed as Roman emperor and also to support the election of Pope Stephen VI. |
| Aglaonice | Between 2nd and 4th century BC | Greece | Aspasia | Believed to be the first woman astronomer. She could predict lunar eclipses and was accused of sorcery; as people believed her ability to predict was actually the ability to create the eclipses. |
| Agnes d'Harcourt | 13th century | France | Hildegarde of Bingen | Abbess of the Abbey of Longchamp and author. She wrote the first biography about Saint Isabel, whom she also served as personal assistant to. |
| Agnes | Flourished c. 1184 | Germany | Hrosvitha | Abbess of St. Mary's in Quedlinburg, where fine needlework and weavings were created, as well as manuscript illustrations. Agnes encouraged artistic creation and supported a healthy art industry with her nuns' creations. |
| Agnes | 1211 | Bohemia | Hildegarde of Bingen | Former Bohemian princess who founded the Poor Clares religious order, an abbey, and a hospital. Canonized in 1989, she is the patron saint of Bohemia. |
| Agnes of Poitou | c. 1024 | France | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Second wife of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor; she governed the empire until her son, Henry IV, came of age to rule. She opposed Pope Alexander II and helped to elect Cadalus, his rival, to the throne. In 1062, her son Henry was kidnapped, and, as ransom to save his life, she resigned as regent and lived out the rest of her life in a convent. |
| Agnes of Dunbar | 1312 | Scotland | Christine de Pisan | Known as "Black Agnes," she successfully defended her family's castle while her husband, Patrick V, Earl of March, was at war, in 1337. |
| Agnes Sampson | 16th century | Scotland | Petronilla de Meath | Healer, she was a chief witness at the North Berwick witch trials. She was tortured, and forced to confess to conspiring with 200 other women to work with the devil to try to kill King James VI. She was found guilty and executed in 1591. |
| Agnes Smedley | 1892 | United States | Virginia Woolf | Journalist, who traveled to Berlin in 1920 and helped opened Germany's first birth control clinic. She continued to travel the world, seeing human and political rights violations first hand. She wrote numerous books, including an autobiography and coverage on China during World War II. |
| Agnès Sorel | c. 1422 | France | Isabella d'Este | Mistress of King Charles VII of France and the first to be publicly acknowledged. All four of their children were also acknowledged and she died of dysentery at age 28, but some believe she was poisoned. |
| Agnes Waterhouse | c 1503 | England | Petronilla de Meath | First woman executed for witchcraft in England. |
| Agnodice | c 505 | Greece | Aspasia | First female gynecologist. She disguised herself as a man in order to go to medical school. She became a gynecologist, and when male doctors realized women preferred her services, they charged her with malpractice. She outed herself, and they tried to pass a law prohibiting women to practice medicine. The law was eventually changed, due to women speaking out, in the twelfth century. |
| Agrippina I | c 14 BC | Rome | Marcella | Married Germanicus and accompanied him into battle during wartime. After his death, she became a voice representing the political struggle of Rome, and her and her two teenage sons were accused of trying to overthrow Tiberius and they were eventually exiled. |
| Agrippina II | 15 | Rome | Marcella | Julia Agrippina, Roman noble woman, the wife of the emperor Claudius and mother of Nero, who effectively ruled the empire for two decades through her influence over both her husband and son. |
| Aisha | 12th century | Spain | Hrosvitha | Spanish poet who presented her work at the Royal Academy of Córdoba, Andalusia. |
| Ajysyt | Mythical | Siberia | Primordial Goddess | Siberian goddess of birth. A fertility deity of the Turkic Yakut people from the Lena River region of Siberia. The name means "birthgiver" and may also be called the "Mother of Cradles" |
| Albertine Necker de Saussure | 1766 | France | Emily Dickinson | Cousin of writer Germaine de Staël, whom she collaborated frequently with and wrote about. Women's rights advocate and supporter of physical education for girls. |
| Aleksandra Kollantay | 1872 | Russia | Margaret Sanger | Women's rights activist, and socialist. She fled Russia in 1905 and lived in Germany, advocating women's issues. After the 1917 Revolution she returned to Russia and was elected Commissar of Social Welfare. |
| Alessandra Giliani | 1307 | Italy | Isabella d'Este | Invented a way to draw blood from veins and arteries of cadavers, and then replaced the blood with fluid dyes. These dyes allowed the veins to remain marked for students to study. She died suddenly at age 19. She was a medical illustrator and assistant to Mondino de Liuzzi. |
| Aletta Jacobs | 1854 | Netherlands | Susan B. Anthony | First woman to graduate from a Dutch university and the first female physician in the Netherlands. She was also a women's rights advocate and translated Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Women and Economics into Dutch, helping spread feminist ideals through the country. After World War I she created the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. |
| Alexandra of Jerusalem | 139 BC | Judea | Boadaceia | Took over the throne of Judea after the death of her husband, Alexander Jannaeus, in 76 BC. She was a peacekeeper in the region and led Judea into a prosperous period during her rule. Upon her death in 67 BC, civil war began immediately as her son came to the throne. |
| Alexandra van Grippenberg | c. 1857 | Finland | Susan B. Anthony | Early advocate for temperance and women's rights. Established a branch of the International Council of Women in Finland. |
| Alfonsina Storni | 1892 | Argentina | Virginia Woolf | Poet, actress, educator and feminist. She founded the Argentine Society of Writers. She had breast cancer, which moved to her throat. Failed treatments curbed her interest in further treatment, and she went to the ocean and killed herself by walking into the water. |
| Alice Kyteler | c. 1324 | Ireland | Petronilla de Meath | Called the Witch of Kilkenny, and was one of the earliest women in Ireland to be accused of witchcraft. All of her husbands died during marriage, leaving her wealthy, and she was accused of murdering them. She was able to escape further accusations of witchcraft due to her aristocratic connections and escaped to England in 1325. |
| Alice Milliat | 1884 | France | Elizabeth Blackwell | Founded the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale and launched the Women's World Games, also called the Women's Olympics. The WWG led to the Olympic Committee to open up track-and-field events at the 1928 games to women. |
| Alice Paul | 1885 | United States | Susan B. Anthony | One of the most important leaders in the American suffragist movement, she wrote the Equal Rights Amendment and founded the National Woman's Party in the United States. |
| Alice Pike Barney | 1857 | United States | Natalie Barney | Mother of Natalie Barney, she was an advocate for the arts, an artist, and a philanthropist. She hosted salon evenings, with the who's who of Washington, D.C.'s society. She gave her home, fully intact, to the Smithsonian Institution, who proceeded to sell it and its contents. |
| Alice Samuel | 16th century | England | Petronilla de Meath | As an elderly woman, she was accused of being a witch by the children of her employer. Her trial was held in 1593, and she was hanged, along with two relatives, as the results of the children's testimony. |
| Alice Stone Blackwell | 1857 | United States | Susan B. Anthony | Daughter of Lucy Stone, she edited the Woman's Journal and assisted with the formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. |
| Aliénor de Poitiers | Flourished late 15th century | France | Christine de Pisan | Author who wrote Les honneurs de la cour, a book about court ritual and etiquette for all social classes. She was described as the Emily Post of the 15th century. |
| Alison Rutherford | 1712 | Scotland | Mary Wollstonecraft | Lyricist, Rutherford moved to Edinburgh in 1753 after becoming a widow and hung out in circles of Scotland's literary elite. She wrote a version of the Scottish folk song Flowers of the Forest. |
| Almucs de Castelnau | c. 1140 | France | Eleanor of Aquitaine | French trobairitz—female troubadour. A single poem of hers survives |
| Aloara | 10th century | Italy | Trotula | After the death of her husband, Pandolf, in 981, she ruled Capua until her death in 992. |
| Alpis de Cudot | c. 1156 | France | Hildegarde of Bingen | Cudot, who suffered from leprosy, had visions incited by her illness. Often religious in nature, one vision led her to believe that the earth was round. As she promoted the concept, people did not believe her. She was canonized in the 19th century. |
| Althea Gibson | 1927 | United States | Elizabeth Blackwell | First African American woman to compete in the Wimbledon Championships and the US Open. She went on to play golf, and became the first African American woman to participate in the Ladies Professional Golf Association. |
| Alukah | Mythical | Canaan | Kali | Succubus or vampire, Alukah may be associated with Lilith. |
| Amat-Mamu | Flourished c. 1750 BC | Babylonia | Ishtar | Priestess and temple scribe in Sippar. Her existence is known from the cuneiform tablets on which she wrote. |
| Amelia Earhart | 1897 | United States | Elizabeth Blackwell | Aviator and women's rights activist. She was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She was also a member of the National Woman's Party, and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. |
| Amelia Holst | 1758 | Germany | Susan B. Anthony | German counterpart of Mary Wollstonecraft, she was an outspoken feminist and educator. She wrote the first book in German arguing for women's educational opportunities. |
| Amelia Villa | 1900 | Bolivia | Elizabeth Blackwell | The first female physician from Bolivia. |
| Amy Beach | 1867 | United States | Ethel Smyth | American pianist and first female composer in the United States. |
| Ana Betancourt | 1832 | Cuba | Sacajawea | She was a mambisa, and was one of the first generation Cuban feminists. |
| Anaconda | 1474 | Haiti | Sacajawea | Taino chief, a poet and a songwriter. |
| Anahita | Mythical | Persia | Ishtar | Virgin goddess of fertility, love and war. |
| Anaïs Nin | 1903 | Europe, United States | Virginia Woolf | Author and diarist. One of the first female authors to write erotica. |
| Anastasia | Flourished c. 1400 | France | Christine de Pisan | Manuscript illumination artist. Nothing is known about her except for the praise heaped upon her by the medieval writer Christine de Pizan who describes her as the finest illuminator of her day. |
| Anastasia | Flourished early 4th century | Rome | Marcella | Arrested and prosecuted in the last wave of Christian persecutions, dying in 304. She was sainted in the 5th century. |
| Anath | Mythical | Canaan | Ishtar | Goddess of love and warfare who is the sister and, according to a much disputed theory, the lover of the great god Ba‘al Hadad. |
| Anasandra | Flourished 3rd century BC | Greece | Sappho | She was a painter. She was the daughter and student of Nealkes, a painter of mythological and genre scenes |
| Andrea Villarreal | 1881 | Mexico; United States | Sacajawea | Teacher, poet, labor organizer and feminist who co-published La Mujer Moderna (English: The Modern Woman), with her sister. |
| Angela Merici | c. 1474 | Italy | Christine de Pisan | Founded the Ursulines order for the education of girls and the care of the sick and needy. She was canonized in 1807. |
| Angelberga | Flourished in the 9th century | Italy | Trotula | Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, co-ruled with her husband, Louis II of Italy. In 869 became abbess of San Sisto in Piacenza, which she had founded. |
| Angéle de la Barthe | c. 1230 | France | Petronilla de Meath | Noblewoman, she was accused of witchcraft and under torture she confessed. She was convicted and burned alive. The city of Toulouse has no records of her trial and historians question the validity of the story. |
| Angelica Balabanoff | 1878 | Ukraine | Margaret Sanger | Russian socialist writer. She moved to Italy and became a leading member of the Italian Socialist Party then moved back to Russia to become active in the Bolshevik Party and worked with Emma Goldman, Lenin and Leon Trotsky. |
| Angelica Kauffman | 1741 | Switzerland-Italy | Artemisia Gentileschi | Leading Italian portrait painter who was admitted to the academies of Florence, Bologna, and Rome, and in 1768 was a co-founder of the Royal Academy of Art, in London. |
| Angelina Grimké | 1805 | United States | Sojourner Truth | Christian women's rights activist and abolitionist. Wrote the first tract in the United States about women's rights, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women (1838). |
| Angelique du Coudray | 1712 | France | Caroline Herschel | Court midwife to Louis XV of France who trained around 4,000 poor French women as midwives. Invented the first lifesize obstetrical mannequin, for practicing mock births. |
| Anna Amalia | 1739 | Germany | Anna van Schurman | German princess and composer. She became the duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, by marriage, and was also regent of the states of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Eisenach from 1758 to 1775. She transformed her court and its surrounding into the most influential cultural center of Germany. |
| Ann Lee | 1736 | United States | Anne Hutchinson | Joined the Shakers and moved to America after being placed in an English prison for a vision which influenced the Shaker belief system about celibacy. She went to jail again in New York for treason after refusing to pledge allegiance. She was called "Mother Ann" and preached in New England. Her work inspired her followers to found the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing. |
| Anna Dalassena Comnena | 1025 | Byzantine | Theodora | Byzantine noblewoman and mother to emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Ruled as empress during her son's absence in military campaigns. |
| Anna Karsch | 1722 | Germany | Emily Dickinson | Dubbed "the German Sappho". The daughter of an innkeeper, Karsch received no formal education and had a difficult life, marked by poverty and two abusive marriages. Her natural abilities as a poet, however, stunned her contemporaries. |
| Anna Comnena | 1083 | Byzantine | Theodora | Wrote the Alexiad, which recounts the political and military history of the Byzantine empire under her father, Alexios I Komnenos. |
| Anna Maria Schwagel | 1729 | Bavaria | Petronilla de Meath | Schwägel or Schwegelin was an alleged German (Bavarian) witch, who was long considered the last person to be executed for witchcraft in Germany. It is now believed she died forgotten in prison. |
| Anna Manzolini | 1714 | Italy | Caroline Herschel | Anatomist and anatomical wax modeler. She was elected professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna in 1755. |
| Anna Pavlova | 1881 | Russia | Georgia O'Keeffe | Russian ballerina whose delicacy and grace mesmerized audiences and inspired a generation of dancers and choreographers. |
| Anna Schabanoff | 1848 | Russia | Elizabeth Blackwell | Pioneering Russian woman pediatrician and women's rights activist. |
| Anna Sophia | 1532 | Denmark | Elizabeth R. | Danish princess who became the electress of Saxony. She was a pioneer in horticulture and agrarian reform. |
| Annabella Drummond | 1350 | Scotland | Isabella d'Este | Queen Consort of Scotland as the wife of Robert III of Scotland. As the Kings health declined she acted strongly to secure the succession of their son David Stewart, Duke of Rothesay. |
| Anne Askew | 1520/1521 | England | Anna van Schurman | English poet who was condemned as a heretic. She was one of the earliest female poets to compose in the English language and the first Englishwoman to demand a divorce. |
| Anne Bacon | c. 1528 | England | Elizabeth R. | Lady and scholar. She made a lasting contribution to English religious literature with her translation from Latin of John Jewel's Apologie of the Anglican Church (1564). She was the mother of Francis Bacon. |
| Anne Baynard | 1672/73 | England | Anna van Schurman | British natural philosopher who was held up as model of piety. She made a particular appeal to her own sex to make an effort to educate themselves. |
| Anne Bonney | 1702 | Ireland | Natalie Barney | Irish woman who became an infamous pirate, operating in the Caribbean. Her numerous love affairs, adventurous life, and sword fighting skills have inspired several film portrayals. |
| Anne Bradstreet | c. 1616 | British North America | Anne Hutchinson | First poet and first female writer in the British North American colonies to be published. Her first volume of poetry was The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, (1650). It was met with a positive reception in both the Old World and the New World. |
| Anne Clough | 1820 | England | Emily Dickinson | Pioneer in women's education, who was determined to create public educational opportunities for young women. She opened her first school in the family home in 1841. She later became the principal of Newnham College, Cambridge which opened in 1875 and was one of the first university colleges for women. |
| Anne Dacier | c. 1651 | France | Anna van Schurman | Foremost classical scholar of her day. Her annotated prose editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey made her famous throughout Europe. |
| Anne Ella Carroll | 1815 | United States | Sojourner Truth | American politician, pamphleteer and lobbyist who served as an advisor to Abraham Lincoln. |
| Anne Halkett | 1623 | England | Caroline Herschel | Known for her candid autobiographical writings and religious meditations. Lady Halkett's Memoirs, begun in 1677–78, focuses on her pursuit of love. |
| Anne of Beaujeu | 1461 | Belgium | Isabella d'Este | Shared the regency of France from 1483 to 1491 during the minority of her brother, Charles VIII. She was one of the most powerful women of the late fifteenth century and was referred to as "Madame la Grande". |
| Anna | 1204 | Bohemia | Hildegarde of Bingen | Anne of Bohemia was married to Henry II, duke of Silesia, in 1216. She was widowed in 1241 and served as regent of Silesia on behalf of her sons. She was responsible for the founding of several religious institutions, including a nunnery of Poor Clares at Breslau. |
| Anne of Brittany | 1477 | France | Isabella d'Este | Duchess of the semi-independent Brittany, Anne was forced into two marriages with French kings. As twice queen of France she introduced learning and erudition to the court. She sponsored the writing, translation, and publication of literary works about women, especially the first French edition of Christine de Pisan's Book of the City of Ladies. |
| Anne Redfearne | Unknown, late 15th century | England | Petronilla de Meath | Hanged as a witch in 1612 as one of the eleven Witches of Pendle in the most famous witch trial in English history. She consistently refused to admit her guilt to the end, and gave no evidence against any of the other accused. |
| Annie Jump Cannon | 1863 | United States | Caroline Herschel | Pioneering woman astronomer she cataloged over 350,000 stars and discovered 300 variable stars, five novae, and one binary star in her lifetime. She was also dedicated to the cause of women's suffrage. In 1929, the National League of Women Voters listed her as one of the twelve greatest living American women. |
| Annie Kenney | 1879 | England | Susan B. Anthony | Militant working class suffragette who held leading positions in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) which campaigned for women's suffrage. |
| Annie Smith Peck | 1850 | United States | Susan B. Anthony | Professor of Latin at Smith College in Massachusetts, she enthusiastically took up mountain climbing in 1894 and became a celebrity for her feats. At the age of sixty-one, she claimed Mount Coropuna in Peru and placed a pennant on the summit that read "Votes for Women." |
| Annie Wood Besant | 1847 | England | Susan B. Anthony | Prominent British socialist, women's rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule. She later became a leading member of the mystical Theosophical Society and moved to India. |
| Antigone | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Tragic character from Greek myth, she was the daughter of Oedipus. She defied King Creon who sentenced her to die by being sealed in a cave. |
| Antiope | Legendary | Greece | Amazon | Amazon warrior queen. She was the sister of the Amazon queen Hippolyte and the daughter of Ares, god of war. |
| Antonia Brico | 1902 | Netherlands | Ethel Smyth | First woman to gain international recognition as a conductor of professional symphony orchestras. |
| Antonia Padoani Bembo | circa 1640 | Venice | Ethel Smyth | Composer and singer, she composed numerous serenatas, arias, religious and secular cantatas, and the opera Ercole amante (1707). |
| Amyte | circa 225 | Greece | Sappho | Arcadian poet, admired by her contemporaries and later generations for her charming epigrams and epitaphs. |
| Aphra Behn | 1640 | English | Anna van Schurman | One of the first English professional female literary writers, producing over 19 plays, plus poetry, translation and novels. |
| Aphrodite | Mythical | Greece | Ishtar | Goddess of love and beauty. According to legend she was born from the sea foam near Cyprus. Aphrodite was the wife of Hephaestus, god of smithing, but she had many lovers, most notably with Ares and Adonis |
| Arachne | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Inventor of woven cloth and net making. Angered Athena, the patron goddess of weaving, by bragging that her skills were greater than the deity's |
| Aretaphila of Cyrene | c. 50 BC | Cyrene - ancient Greek colony in North Africa | Boadaceia | Cyrenean noble woman who is said to have deposed the tyrant Nicocrates. |
| Arete of Cyrene | c. 350 BC | Cyrene - ancient Greek colony in North Africa | Aspasia | Cyrenaic/ancient Greek philosopher, said to have written many books and taught natural and moral philosophy at academies of Attica. She founded the Cyrenaic school of hedonism, which promoted an ethic of pleasure as the supreme good in the world. |
| Ariadne | Mythical | Crete | Snake Goddess | Helped Theseus overthrow Minos and in some accounts married him. She was worshipped on the Greek Islands and is mostly associated with mazes and labyrinths. |
| Arianrhod | Mythical | Wales | Kali | Death goddess. A major character in the collection of prose tales The Mabinogion, a descendant of Don, the mother goddess. |
| Arinitti | Mythical | Anatolia | Ishtar | Main deity, queen of Hatti, Heaven and earth. Also known as Arinna. |
| Aristoclea | c. 6th Century BC | Greece | Aspasia | Priestess at Delphi; philosopher; taught Pythagoras his moral doctrines. |
| Arsinoe II | c. 316 BC | Greece | Boadaceia | Queen of Thrace, Macedonia, and later co-ruler of Egypt with brother. Shared all brother's titles, won chariot races in the Olympics, had her image printed on coins, and even founded her own cult. |
| Artemis | Mythical | Greece | Snake Goddess | Agricultural deity, moon goddess, watcher of forests ... many meanings in many cultures. |
| Artemisia I | c. 480 BC | Greece | Boadaceia | Queen of Halicarnassus, fought for Xerxes I (commanding naval ships) against the Greeks during the Second Persian Invasion of Greece. |
| Artemisia II | 4th century BC | Greece | Boadaceia | Sister and wife of the famous King Mausolus, she created the Mausoleum, considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in memory of her husband. |
| Asherah | Mythical | Canaan | Ishtar | Goddess of sexuality and procreation worshipped by Semitic peoples of Syria and Israel. |
| Ashtoreth | Mythical | Hebrew | Ishtar | Goddess of fertility and reproduction, worshipped by Semitic peoples of Phoenicia. |
| Aspasia of Athens | c. 5th century | Greece | Aspasia | Practiced obstetrics and gynecology, and seems to have been the teacher of Aetius, the royal physician to Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Not to be confused with Aspasia of Miletus who has a place setting at the table. |
| Astarte | Mythical | Phoenicia | Ishtar | Fertility goddess. The Hellenized form of the Middle Eastern goddess Ishtar. She was also worshipped in Egypt. |
| Atalanta | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Legendary virgin huntress, warrior and athlete, unwilling to marry, she was loved by the hero Meleager. |
| Athaliah | c. 9th century BC | Jerusalem | Judith | Daughter of Jezebel, Queen regent who seized control of the throne of Judah and fought to establish worship of her god, Baal, instead of Yahweh. |
| Athanarsa | c. 790 | Byzantine Empire | Hrosvitha | Saint known for her miraculous healing of the sick and those seen as possessed. She was for a while adviser to the Empress Theodora II. |
| Athene | Mythical | Greece | Snake Goddess | Virgin goddess, warrior and patron of culture, deity of artists and architects, weavers, protector of Athens. |
| Atira | Mythical | North America | Primordial Goddess | Goddess of the Earth in Pawnee mythology. Her name means "Vault of the Sky". |
| Augusta Fickert | 1855 | Austria | Susan B. Anthony | (Auguste Fickert) Austrian feminist and social reformer. |
| Augusta Savage | 1892 | United States | Georgia O'Keeffe | Influential African-American Sculptor associated with Harlem Renaissance. |
| Augusta Schmidt | 1833 | Germany | Susan B. Anthony | Pioneering German feminist, educator, journalist and women's rights activist. |
| Augustina Saragossa | 1786 | Spain | Margaret Sanger | Also known as Agustina de Aragón, she was the 'Spanish Joan of Arc'. Fought as an officer in the Peninsular War / Spanish War of Independence. |
| Awashonks | 17th century | United States | Sacajawea | Sachem (chief) of the Sakonnet tribe in Rhode Island. Historical figure connected to colonial history of the US. |
| Axiothea | c. 350 BC | Greece | Aspasia | Student of Plato and Speusippus, who studied at the academy dressed as a man. |
| Baba Petkova | 1826 | Bulgaria | Emily Dickinson | Pioneer of women's education. Founded the first girls' schools in Bulgaria when it was under Ottoman rule. Government officials tried to stop her and she was arrested and put on trial. She was released through lack of evidence and continued her campaign to educate women. |
| Babe Didrikson | June 26, 1911 | United States | Elizabeth Blackwell | Excelled at multiple sports in the early-to-mid twentieth century. Olympic gold medalist; in the top ten of multiple "Greatest Athlete" lists. |
| Baptista Malatesta | c. 1384 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | Renaissance poet who was a learned woman of the aristocracy, educated in philosophy, languages, poetry and oratory. She corresponded with other scholars of her time such as Leonardo Bruni. |
| Baranamtarra | c. 2500 BC | Sumer | Ishtar | Co-ruler with her husband city of Lagash, a city in Sumeria. Records which survive show she conducted business and trade in her own right. |
| Barbara Bodichon | 1827 | United Kingdom | Susan B. Anthony | Landscape artist and activist, known for her efforts in women's rights and suffrage campaigns. |
| Barbara Hepworth | 1903 | United Kingdom | Georgia O’Keeffe | Modernist artist and sculptor from England. |
| Barbara Strozzi | 1619 | Italy | Isabella d'Este | Baroque composer and singer |
| Barbara Uttman | c. 1514 | Germany | Anna van Schurman | Established the lacemaking industry in her city around 1560. |
| Barbe de Verrue | 13th century | France | Eleanor of Aquitaine | French Trouvère and singer |
| Baroness de Beausoleil | c. 1600 | France | Caroline Herschel | Pioneering female mining engineer and mineralogist who travelled extensively in Europe in search of mineral deposits. |
| Basilea | Mythical | Ancient Greece | Boadaceia | The first queen of the legendary Kingdom of Atlantis in ancient Greek folk tradition. |
| Basine | c. 438 | Thuringia | Saint Bridget | Queen of Thuringia in the middle of the fifth century. |
| Bathilde | c. 626 | Burgundy and Neustria | Theodora | Anglo-Saxon of noble birth, Wife and Queen of Clovis II and then Queen regent to her son Clotaire II. Led a humble life, published a hagiography and was herself canonised. She instituted many reforms relating to the rights of individuals, abolition of the slave trade in France and equal taxation for men and women. |
| Bathsua Makin | c. 1600 | England | Anna van Schurman | Proto-Feminist, middle-class Englishwoman who contributed to the emerging criticism of woman's position in the domestic and public spheres |
| Baudonivia | 7th century | France | Hrosvitha | French nun and scholar. Created a memoir of saint and convent founder Radegund. |
| Beatrice de Die | c. 1175 | French | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Trobairitz—a female troubadour (poet-musician) in Provence, France. |
| Beatrice Webb | 1858 | English | Margaret Sanger | English socialist, economist and historian. She studied the conditions of the working class in England and wrote numerous books on the root causes of poverty. She co-founded the London School of Economics and Political Science. |
| Beatrix Galindo | 15th century | Spain | Christine de Pisan | Writer, humanist, and a teacher of Queen Isabella of Castile and her children. |
| Begga | 615 | Belgium | Hrosvitha | On the death of her husband, she took the veil, founded seven churches, and built a convent at Andenne on the Meuse River (Andenne sur Meuse) where she spent the rest of her days as abbess. She is a saint. Some hold that the Beguine movement which came to light in the 12th century was actually founded by St Begga; and the church in the beguinage of Lier, Belgium, has a statue of St Begga standing above the inscription: St. Begga, our foundress. |
| Bel-Shalti-Narrar | c. 540 BC | Babylonia | Hatshepsut | High priestess, responsible for first museum collection. |
| Belva Lockwood | 1830 | United States | Elizabeth Blackwell | Activist for women's rights, including suffrage, property rights, and education. One of the first female lawyers in the United States, and the first to be permitted to practice before the Supreme Court. She was also the first woman to appear on a ballot for U.S. president. |
| Berengaria | c.1165 | Navarre | Hildegarde of Bingen | Queen of England alongside Richard the Lionheart, although she herself never visited in Richard's lifetime. Known for her piety and as a benefactor of monasteries. |
| Berenguela | 1179 or 1180 | Spain | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Queen of Castile in 1217 and Queen consort of León from 1197 to 1204. She was responsible for the re-unification of Castile and León under her son's authority, and supported his efforts in the Reconquista. She was a patron of religious institutions and supported the writing of a history of the two countries. |
| Bernarda de la Cerda | 1596 | Portugal | Anna van Schurman | Portuguese scholar, writer and playwright. Her skill was celebrated in verse by the poets Manuel de Gallegos and Lope de Vega |
| Bertha Lutz | 1894 | Brazil | Susan B. Anthony | A Brazilian zoologist, politician, and diplomat. Lutz became a leading figure in both the Pan American feminist movement and human rights movement. |
| Bertha of England | Estimated around c. 565 | England | Theodora | Queen of Kent whose influence led to the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England. She was canonized as a saint for her role in its establishment during that period of English history. |
| Bertha of Sulzbach | 1110s | Germany | Trotula | First wife and Empress of Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus. |
| Bertha von Suttner | 9 June 1843 | Austria | Emily Dickinson | Czech-Austrian pacifist and novelist. In 1905 she was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, thus being the second female Nobel laureate after Marie Curie's 1903 award, and the first Austrian laureate. |
| Bertha of France | 800 | France | Hrosvitha | Daughter of Charlemagne, who forbade his daughters to marry. She focused on scholarly pursuits, but was banished to a convent when her illegitimate children by an official in her father's court were discovered. |
| Berthe Morisot | 1841 | France | Georgia O’Keeffe | Painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt. |
| Berthildis | c. 626 | France | Hrosvitha | A saint, and the wife and queen of Clovis II, the king of Burgundy and Neustria (639–658). From her donations, the abbeys of Corbie and Chelles were founded: it is likely that others such as Jumièges, Jouarre and Luxeuil were also founded by the queen. She provided support for Saint Claudius of Besançon and his abbey in the Jura Mountains. |
| Bertille | Unknown; died 692 | France | Hrosvitha | Saint and abbess of Chelles Abbey in France. She was known for her devotion to self-denial. |
| Bertha | Born between 710 and 727 | France | Hrosvitha | Frankish queen. She was the wife of Pepin the Short and the mother of Charlemagne, Carloman, and Gisela. |
| Elizabeth Talbot | 16th century | England | Elizabeth R. | Notable figure of 16th century Elizabethan English society. Through three marriages she accumulated huge wealth and built on a grand scale, notably Hardwick Hall. |
| Bessie Smith | 1894 | United States | Sojourner Truth | American blues singer, nicknamed the "Empress of the Blues" |
| Betsy Kjelsberg | 1866 | Norway | Elizabeth Blackwell | Norwegian politician for the Liberal Party, being the first female board member of the party, Norway's first female factory inspector from 1910 to 1936, and a member of the feminist movement. |
| Bettina von Arnim | 1785 | Germany | Emily Dickinson | Writer, publisher, composer, singer, visual artist, an illustrator, patron of young talent, and a social activist. She was the archetype of the Romantic era's zeitgeist and the crux of many creative relationships of canonical artistic figures. |
| Bettisia Gozzadini | 1209 | Italy | Trotula | An Italian lawyer who flourished around 1250, and lectured in law at the University of Bologna. She reputedly obtained her education disguised as a man and taught from behind a screen so that she would not distract the students. She was probably the first woman to hold a post at a university. |
| Blanche of Castile | 1188 | France | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Queen of France as the wife of Louis VIII. She acted as regent twice during the reign of her son, Louis IX. |
| Blandina | Unknown; died 177 | Italy | Hypatia | Christian martyr during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. |
| Blodeuwedd | Mythical | Wales | Ishtar | Goddess of the white flower. |
| Bona-Dea | Mythical | Rome | Fertile Goddess | "Good Goddess", procreation, agriculture. |
| Bourgot | Unknown | France | Christine de Pisan | Daughter of a French manuscript illuminator active in Paris between 1335 and 1380; she assisted with much of his work. |
| Bridget Bevan | 1698 | Wales | Mary Wollstonecraft | Welsh philanthropist and public benefactor. |
| Birgitta | 1303 | Sweden | Hildegarde of Bingen | Mystic and saint, and founder of the Bridgettines nuns and monks after the death of her husband of twenty years. Outside of Sweden, she was also known as the Princess of Nericia and was the mother of Catherine of Vadstena. |
| Bridget Tott | 1610 | Denmark | Anna van Schurman | Produced the first translations of Roman Classical literature into Danish. |
| Brigh Brigaid | 50 | Ireland | Saint Bridget | Celtic brehon (judge). Some of her work was cited as legal precedences for centuries. |
| Brigid | Mythical | Celtic Ireland | Fertile Goddess | Fertility goddess |
| Britomartis | Mythical | Crete | Snake Goddess | Moon goddess, huntress, ruler of women's societies. |
| Brunhilde | 543 | Spain, France | Theodora | Visigoth Queen Regent known for both political acumen and ruthlessness. |
| Beruiah | 2nd century | Palestine | Judith | Mentioned in the Talmud as a sage with extensive knowledge of Jewish rabbinical law. |
| Brynhild | Mythical | Germanic culture | Boadaceia | Shieldmaiden and a valkyrie in Germanic mythology, where she appears as a main character in the Völsunga saga and some Eddic poems treating the same events. Under the name Brünnhilde she appears in the Nibelungenlied and therefore also in Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. She may be inspired by the Visigothic princess Brunhilda of Austrasia. |
| Buto | Mythical | Egypt | Snake Goddess | Also called Wadjet. The patron and protector of Lower Egypt. |
| Caelia Macrina | Unknown | Italy | Marcella | Known for endowing an alimentary fund for girls, which was more generous to girls than was commonly done at the time. |
| Cambra | circa 4th century | Britain | Saint Bridget | According to John Lewis's The history of Great-Britain : from the first inhabitants thereof, 'till the death of Cadwalader, last king of the Britains, Cambra was known for teaching noblemen to build cities and castles, herself building the cities Neomag and Noepag, giving laws and judgments, and being a prophet. |
| Camilla | Legendary | Rome | Sophia | Hunter, warrior, Diana avenged her death. |
| Candelaria Figueredo | 1852 | Cuba | Sacajawea | Cuban patriot who fought in the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain. |
| Capillana | 16th century | Peru | Sacajawea | Peruvian ruler who befriended Spanish conquistadors. |
| Lady Carcas | Legendary | France | Hrosvitha | Legendary Saracen Princess who headed the army of Carcas and saved the city by tricking Charlemagne's forces into believing Carcas was unseizable. |
| Cardea | Mythical | Rome | Fertile Goddess | Goddess of changing seasons. |
| Carlota Matienzo | 1881 | Puerto Rico | Sacajawea | Puerto Rican feminist and educator. Worked for educational reform and one of the founders of two women's rights organizations. |
| Carlotta Ferrari | 1837 | Italy | Ethel Smyth | Italian composer noted for opera. |
| Carmenta | Mythical | Italy | Sappho | Goddess of childbirth and prophecy, associated with technological innovation as well as the protection of mothers and children, and a patron of midwives. She was also said to have invented the Latin alphabet. |
| Caroline Norton | 1808 | England | Susan B. Anthony | An English feminist, social reformer, and author of the early and mid-nineteenth century. Caroline abandoned her husband in 1836, following which her husband sued her close friend Lord Melbourne, the then Whig Prime Minister, for criminal conversation. The jury threw out the claim, but Caroline was unable to obtain a divorce and was denied access to her three sons. Caroline's intense campaigning led to the passing of the Custody of Infants Act 1839, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 and the Married Women's Property Act 1870. Caroline modelled for the fresco of Justice in the House of Lords by Daniel Maclise, who chose her because she was seen by many as a famous victim of injustice. |
| Caroline Schlegel | 1763 | Germany | Mary Wollstonecraft | Noted German intellectual. |
| Carrie Chapman Catt | 1859 | America | Susan B. Anthony | American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. |
| Carrie Nation | 1846 | America | Susan B. Anthony | American woman who was a radical member of the temperance movement, which opposed alcohol before the advent of Prohibition. She is particularly noteworthy for attacking alcohol-serving establishments (most often taverns) with a hatchet. |
| Cartismandua | 43 | England | Boadaceia | 1st-century queen of the Brigantes, a Celtic people living in what is now northern England. She came to power around the time of the Roman conquest of Britain, and formed a large tribal agglomeration that became loyal to Rome. Our only knowledge of her is through the Roman historian Tacitus, though she appears to have been widely influential in early Roman Britain. |
| Cassandra Fidelis | circa 1465 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | Most renowned woman scholar in Italy during the last decades of the Quattrocento. |
| Cassandra | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Apollo fell in love with her, among other tales. |
| Caterina Cornaro | 1454 | Cyprus | Isabella d’Este | The last Queen of Cyprus from 26 August 1474 to 26 February 1489 and declared a "Daughter of Saint Mark" in order that Venice could claim control of Cyprus after the death of her husband, James II ("James the Bastard"). |
| Caterina Sforzia | 1463 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | Italian noblewoman and Countess of Forlì and Lady of Imola firstly with her husband Girolamo Riario, and after his death as a regent of her son Ottaviano. |
| Caterina van Hemessen | 1528 | Antwerp, Southern Netherlands | Artemisia Gentileschi | Renaissance painter. She was a member of the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke. |
| Catharine Fisher | Unknown; died after 1577 | Netherlands | Elizabeth R. | Dutch woman who fled to England to escape religious persecution during the 16th Century. According to Venator, Tishem was a remarkably erudite woman, fluent in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and English. She supervised the education of her son, who became a celebrated classical scholar. |
| Catherine Beecher | 1800 | America | Margaret Sanger | American educator known for her forthright opinions on female education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of kindergarten into children's education. |
| Catherine de Rambouillet | 1588 | France | Natalie Barney | Society hostess and a major figure in the literary history of 17th-century France. |
| Catherine Deshayes | circa 1640 | France | Petronilla de Meath | French fortune teller, poisoner and an alleged sorceress, one of the chief personages in the affaire des poisons, during the reign of Louis XIV. Her cult (Affair of the Poisons) was suspected to have killed anywhere between 1000 and 2500 people in Black Masses. |
| Catherine Greene | 1755 | America | Anne Hutchinson | Wife of the American Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene, mother of five and noted for being a supporter of the inventor Eli Whitney. |
| Catherine | circa 282 | Italy | Hypatia | According to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early 4th century at the hands of the pagan emperor Maxentius. |
| Catherine of Aragon | 1485 | England | Elizabeth R. | Queen of England from 1509 until 1533 as the first wife of King Henry VIII; she was previously Princess of Wales as the wife of Prince Arthur. |
| Catherine Adorni | 1447 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | Italian Roman Catholic saint and mystic, admired for her work among the sick and the poor and remembered because of various writings describing both these actions and her mystical experiences. |
| Catherine of Siena | 1347 | Italy | Hildegarde of Bingen | Tertiary of the Dominican Order and a Scholastic philosopher and theologian. She also worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France and to establish peace among the Italian city-states. Since 18 June 1939, she is one of the two patron saints of Italy, together with St. Francis of Assisi. On 3 October 1970, she was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI. |
| Catherine Pavlovna | 1788 | Russia / Germany | Elizabeth R. | Daughter of Paul I, emperor of Russia. Her second marriage to Wilhelm, crown prince of Württemberg, allowed her to create the earliest welfare state in Europe. |
| Catherine II | 1729 | Russia | Elizabeth R. | Most renowned and the longest-ruling female leader of Russia. An example of an enlightened despot, she was a correspondent of Voltaire and an amateur opera librettist. Catherine presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment. |
| Celia Fiennes | 1662 | England | Mary Wollstonecraft | Diarist and travel writer. |
| Cerridwen | Mythical | Wales | Ishtar | Barley and moon goddess who symbolised the continuous cycle of life and death. |
| Caritas Pirckheimer | 1466 | Germany | Anna van Schurman | Learned woman who maintained a correspondence with many of the great scholars of her day. |
| Charlotte Brontë | 1816 | England | Emily Dickinson | Author of the novel Jane Eyre which mirrors Brontë's own struggle for integrity and self-sufficiency. |
| Charlotte Corday | 1768 | France | Mary Wollstonecraft | Assassin of French Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. At her trial, Corday revealed her idealistic ambition, allegedly proclaiming, "I killed one man to save 100,000." |
| Charlotte Guest | 1812 | Britain | Elizabeth Blackwell | English aristocrat who is best known as the first publisher in modern print format of The Mabinogion which is the earliest prose literature of Britain. Guest established The Mabinogion as a source literature of Europe, claiming this recognition among literati in the context of contemporary passions for the Chivalric romance of King Arthur and the Gothic movement. |
| Charlotte Perkins Gilman | 1860 | America | Susan B. Anthony | Prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis. |
| Chicomecoatl | Mythical | Mesoamerica | Snake Goddess | Maize goddess. |
| Chiomara | Unknown | Turkey | Boadaceia | Galatian noblewoman and the wife of Orgiagon, chieftain of the Tectosagi, one of three Galatian tribes during the Galatian War with Rome, of 189 BC. |
| Christabel Pankhurst | 1880 | England | Susan B. Anthony | Suffragette born in Manchester, England. A co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), she directed its militant actions from exile in France from 1912 to 1913. In 1914 she supported the war against Germany. After the war she moved to the United States, where she worked as an evangelist for the Second Adventist movement. |
| Christina of Sweden | 1626 | Sweden | Elizabeth R. | Queen regent of Sweden for a brief period, but abdicated and went to Italy where she became involved in music and theater. Scandalized the Swedish court with her androgynous appearance and penchant for cross dressing, though the truth of her sexuality and gender identity is not truly known. |
| Christina Rossetti | 1830 | United Kingdom | Emily Dickinson | English poet famous for her long poem Goblin Market. |
| Circe | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Appeared in the Odyssey, turned men into swine, lived alone on her island. |
| Clara Barton | 1821 | America | Elizabeth Blackwell | Pioneering nurse who founded the American Red Cross. She worked as a hospital nurse in the American Civil War, and as a teacher and patent clerk. Barton is noteworthy for doing humanitarian work at a time when relatively few women worked outside the home. |
| Clara Hatzerlin | 1430 | Germany | Christine de Pisan | Professional scribe in 15th century Augsburg. |
| Clara Schumann | 1819 | Germany | Ethel Smyth | German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era. She exerted her influence over a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital and the tastes of the listening public. She was the first to perform publicly any work by Brahms. |
| Clara Zetkin | 1857 | Germany | Margaret Sanger | German Marxist theorist, activist, and advocate for women's rights.[1] In 1911, she organized the first International Women's Day. Until 1917, she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany, then she joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and its far-left wing, the Spartacist League; this later became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which she represented in the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic from 1920 to 1933. |
| Clare of Assisi | 1194 | Italy | Hildegarde of Bingen | Italian saint and one of the first followers of Saint Francis of Assisi. She founded the Order of Poor Ladies, a monastic religious order for women in the Franciscan tradition, and wrote their Rule of Life—the first monastic rule known to have been written by a woman. Following her death, the order she founded was renamed in her honor as the Order of Saint Clare, commonly referred to today as the Poor Clares. |
| Claricia | 13th century | Germany | Hrosvitha | German illuminator who included a self-portrait in a South German psalter of c.1200. |
| Claudine de Tencin | 1682 | France | Natalie Barney | French salonist and author. |
| Clémence Royer | 1830 | France | Elizabeth Blackwell | Self-taught French scholar who lectured and wrote on economics, philosophy, science and feminism. She is best known for her controversial 1862 French translation of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. |
| Cleobuline | Ancient times. | Greece | Sappho | Ancient Greek poet. She wrote poetry in hexameter verse and was particularly skilled in writing riddles or enigmas. Aristotle quotes her in both his Poetics and the Rhetoric. She was sufficiently well known to be satirized in a play by the comic dramatist Cratinus. |
| Cleopatra | 69 BC | Egypt | Boadaceia | The last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt. |
| Clodia | c. 95 BC | Ancient Rome | Hypatia | One of three known daughters of the ancient Roman patrician Appius Claudius Pulcher and either Caecilia Metella Balearica, or her cousin, Caecilia Metella daughter of Lucius Caecilius Metellus Diadematus. Her life, immortalized in the writings of Marcus Tullius Cicero and also, it is generally believed, in the poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus, was characterized by perpetual scandal. |
| Clotilda | 475 | France | Theodora | Venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church, she was instrumental in her husband Clovis I's famous conversion to Catholicism and, in her later years, was known for her almsgiving and penitential works of mercy. |
| Clytemnestra | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Sister of Helen of Troy, she murdered her second husband, who forced her to marry him and had her daughter sacrificed. |
| Coatlicue | Mythical | Mesoamerica | Kali | Aztec earth goddess |
| Cobhlair Mor | Unknown, died 1395 | Ireland | Christine de Pisan | Affluent Irish woman and the preserver of Gaelic customs at a time when they were being undermined by Edward III of England. |
| Colette | 1873 | France | Virginia Woolf | French novelist and performer. She is best known for her novel Gigi, the basis for the film and Lerner and Loewe stage production of the same title. Colette was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. |
| Constance Lytton | 1869 | Britain | Susan B. Anthony | Influential British suffragette activist, writer, speaker and campaigner for prison reform, votes for women, and birth control. She sometimes used the name Jane Warton. |
| Constantia | 1154 | Sicily | Trotula | Heiress of the Norman kings of Sicily and the wife of Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor. She was Queen of Sicily in 1194–98, jointly with her husband from 1194 to 1197, and with her infant son Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1198. |
| Corinna of Tanagra | Unknown; her life is traditionally attributed to the 6th century BC | Greece | Sappho | Ancient Greek poet. According to ancient sources such as Plutarch and Pausanias, she came from Tanagra in Boeotia, where she was a teacher and rival to the better-known Theban poet Pindar. Although two of her poems survive in epitome, most of her work is preserved in papyrus fragments. |
| Cornelia | Around 73 BC | Ancient Rome | Hypatia | Roman noblewoman and fifth wife of Pompey the Great. She fled with her husband to Egypt after his defeat at Pharsalus, only to witness his murder. |
| Cornelia | 190 BC | Ancient Rome | Hypatia | Second daughter of Scipio Africanus, the hero of the Second Punic War. She is remembered as a prototypical example of a virtuous Roman woman. |
| Cresilla | Ancient times | Greece | Sappho | In 1804, Kresilas was mistakenly identified as a woman named "Cresilla" by Matilda Betham, who thought "she" had placed third behind Polykleitos and Phidias in a competition to sculpt seven Amazons for the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. As a result, Kresilas was mistakenly included in the Heritage Floor. |
| Cristina Trivulzio | 1808 | Italy | Natalie Barney | Italian noblewoman who played a prominent part in Italy's struggle for independence. She is also notable as a writer and journalist. |
| Sibyl of Cumae | c. 500 BC | Rome | Sophia | Prophet |
| Cunegund | 1234 | Hungary | Hildegarde of Bingen | Saint and the wife of Boleslaus V of Poland, with whom she took a vow of chastity after marriage. |
| Cybele | Mythical | Phrygia | Ishtar | Mountain mother, personification of earth |
| Cynane | Unknown; died BC | Macedon | Boadaceia | Half-sister to Alexander the Great, and daughter of Philip II by Audata, an Illyrian princess. Polyaenus writes, "Cynane, the daughter of Philip was famous for her military knowledge: she conducted armies, and in the field charged at the head of them. In an engagement with the Illyrians, she with her own hand slew Caeria their queen; and with great slaughter defeated the Illyrian army." |
| Cynisca | c. 440 BC | Greece | Aspasia | Greek princess of Sparta who became the first woman in history to win at the ancient Olympic Games. |
| Damo | c. 500 BC | Greece | Aspasia | Pythagorean philosopher said by many to have been the daughter of Pythagoras and Theano. |
| Danielis | Flourished 9th century | Greece | Theodora | Widowed Byzantine noblewoman from Patras. |
| Danu | Mythical | Celtic Ireland | Fertile Goddess | Goddess of plenty |
| Daphne | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Nymph, hunter |
| Deborah Sampson | 1760 | America | Anne Hutchinson | Woman who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. She is part of a small number of women with a documented record of military combat experience in that war. She served 17 months in the army, as "Robert Shurtliff" of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, was wounded in 1782 and honorably discharged at West Point, New York in 1783. |
| Deborah | Ancient times | Israel | Judith | Prophet of the God of the Israelites, the fourth Judge of pre-monarchic Israel, counselor, warrior, and the wife of Lapidoth according to the Book of Judges chapters 4 and 5. The only female judge mentioned in the Bible, Deborah led a successful counterattack against the forces of Jabin king of Canaan and his military commander Sisera; the narrative is recounted in chapter 4. Judges chapter 5 gives the same story in poetic form. This passage, often called The Song of Deborah, may date to as early as the 12th century BC and is perhaps the earliest sample of Hebrew poetry. |
| Demeter | Mythical | Greece | Snake Goddess | Goddess of agriculture |
| Dervorguilla | c. 1210 | Scotland | Eleanor of Aquitaine | 'Lady of substance' in 13th century Scotland, the wife from 1223 of John, 5th Baron de Balliol, and mother of John I, a future king of Scotland. |
| Dhuoda | c. 803 | France | Hrosvitha | Author of the Liber Manualis, a handbook written for her son. |
| Dido | c. 850 BC | North Africa | Hatshepsut | Phoenician princess, founded Carthage |
| Diemud | About 1060 | Germany | Hrosvitha | Recluse at Wessobrunn Abbey in Upper Bavaria, Germany. |
| Diotima | Ancient times | Greece | Aspasia | Philosopher and priestess who plays an important role in Plato's Symposium. Her ideas are the origin of the concept of Platonic love. Since the only source concerning her is Plato, it is uncertain whether she was a real historical personage or merely a fictional creation; however, nearly all of the characters named in Plato's dialogues have been found to correspond to real people living in ancient Athens. |
| Djuna Barnes | 1892 | America | Natalie Barney | American journalist, playwright, poet, short-story writer, and visual artist, whose work continues to "beguile, excite and inspire readers". She is best known for her novel Nightwood (1936, England; 1937 United States), which is a masterpiece of high modernism. |
| Dolores Ibárruri | 1895 | Spain | Margaret Sanger | Spanish Republican leader of the Spanish Civil War and communist politician of Basque origin. |
| Dorcas | 1st century | Israel | Marcella | Christian disciple who lived in Joppa, referenced in the Book of Acts (9:36–42) in the New Testament. |
| Doris Lessing | 1919 | Britain | Virginia Woolf | British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. |
| Dorotea Bucca | 1360 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | Italian physician. Little is known of her life, except that she held a chair of medicine and philosophy at the University of Bologna for over forty years from 1390. |
| Dorothea Dix | 1802 | Italy | Margaret Sanger | American activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums. During the Civil War, she served as Superintendent of Army Nurses. |
| Dorothea Lange | 1895 | America | Georgia O’Keeffe | Influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography. |
| Dorothea Leporin-Erxleben | 1715 | Germany | Caroline Herschel | First female medical doctor in Germany |
| Dorothea von Rodde | 1770 | Germany | Elizabeth Blackwell | German scholar and the first woman to receive a doctor of philosophy degree in Germany. She was one of the so-called Universitätsmamsellen, a group of five academically active women during the 18th-and 19th centuries, daughters of academics at Göttingen University, alongside Meta Forkel-Liebeskind, Therese Huber, Philippine Engelhard, and Caroline Schelling. |
| Dorothy Arzner | 1897 | America | Georgia O’Keeffe | American film director whose career in feature films spanned from the silent era of the late 1920s into the early 1940s. She was one of the very few women who established a name for herself as a director in the film industry during this time. Her body of work remains to this day the largest by a woman director within the studio system. |
| Dorothy Richardson | 1873 | Britain | Virginia Woolf | British author and journalist. Author of Pilgrimage, a sequence of 13 novels, she was one of the earliest modernist novelists to use stream of consciousness as a narrative technique. Richardson also emphasizes in Pilgrimage the importance and distinct nature of female experiences. |
| Dorothy Wordsworth | 1771 | England | Caroline Herschel | English author, poet and diarist. She had no ambitions to be an author, and her writings consist only of series of letters, diary entries, poems and short stories. |
| Douceline de Digne | c. 1215 | France | Hildegarde of Bingen | Founder of the Beguines of Marseilles and the subject of a vita that survives today, The Life of Douceline de Digne. |
| Eachtach | Mythical | Ireland | Boadaceia | In one version of a myth, Eachtach begged Fionn to help her father but he refused. To avenge her father's death, Eachtach gathered her brothers into an army and harried Fionn for four years until he was near death from the constant battles. In the end, however, Eachtach did not manage to kill Fionn. |
| Eadburga | Flourished from 787 to 802 | England | Hrosvitha | Wife of King Beorhtric of Wessex; according to Asser's Life of Alfred the Great she accidentally killed her husband by poison. She fled to Francia, where she is said to have been offered the chance of marrying Charlemagne, but ruined the opportunity. Instead she was appointed as the abbess of a convent. Here she is said to have fornicated with an English exile. As a result, she was eventually expelled from the monastery and ended her days begging in the streets of Pavia. |
| Eanswith | Circa 614 | England | Hrosvitha | Anglo Saxon princess. In 630, Eanswith founded the Benedictine Folkestone Priory, the first nunnery in England. |
| Ebba | Unknown; died 870 | Scotland | Hrosvitha | Abbess of Coldingham Priory in south-east Scotland. |
| Edith Cavell | 1865 | England | Elizabeth Blackwell | British nurse celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers from both sides without discrimination and in helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during the First World War, for which she was arrested and executed. |
| Edith Evans | 1888 | England | Georgia O’Keeffe | English actress best known for her work on the stage, but also appeared in films towards the beginning and end of her career. |
| Edith | c. 1025 | England | Eleanor of Aquitaine | English Queen who was also a highly educated, multilingual royal advisor. Was crowned, unlike most queens of her era. |
| Edith Sitwell | 1887 | Britain | Virginia Woolf | British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. Her home was always open to London's poetic circle, to whom she was unfailingly generous and helpful. Sitwell published poetry continuously from 1913, some of it abstract and set to music. With her dramatic style and exotic costumes, sometimes she was labelled a poseur, but consistently, her work was praised for its solid technique and painstaking craftsmanship. |
| Edith Wharton | 1862 | America | Virginia Woolf | Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. |
| Edmonia Lewis | circa 1844 | America | Sojourner Truth | African American and Native American sculptor who worked for most of her career in Rome. She gained fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world. Her work is known for incorporating themes relating to black and American Indian people into Neoclassical style sculpture. By the end of the 19th century, she was the only black woman who had participated in and been recognized to any degree by the American artistic mainstream. |
| Edna St. Vincent Millay | 1892 | United States | Virginia Woolf | Pulitzer prize-winning lyrical poet and playwright; feminist activist; bisexual icon |
| Egee | Legendary, 12th century BC | Libya | Amazon | Amazonian leader of women's army |
| Ehyophsta | Unknown; died 1915 | America | Sacajawea | Cheyenne woman who fought in the Battle of Beecher Island in 1868, and also fought the Shoshone that same year, where she counted coup against one enemy and killed another. She fought the Shoshone again in 1869. She was also a member of a secret society composed exclusively of Cheyenne women. |
| Eileen Gray | 1878 | Ireland | Georgia O’Keeffe | Irish furniture designer and architect and a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. |
| Eleanor Roosevelt | 1884 | America | Margaret Sanger | American politician, diplomat, and activist. |
| Eleonora Duse | 1858 | Italy | Georgia O’Keeffe | Italian actress, often known simply as Duse. She was the subject of the 1947 biographical film Eleonora Duse. |
| Elfrida Andree | 1841 | Sweden | Ethel Smyth | Swedish organist, composer, and conductor. |
| Elin Kallio | 1859 | Finland | Elizabeth Blackwell | Celebrated pioneering Finnish gymnast, considered the founder of the women's gymnastic movement in Finland. |
| Elisabeth de La Guerre | 1665 | France | Ethel Smyth | French musician, harpsichordist and composer. |
| Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun | 1755 | France | Artemisia Gentileschi | Prominent French painter. |
| Elisabetta Gonzaga | 1471 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | Influential noblewoman of the Italian Renaissance. |
| Elisabetta Sirani | 1638 | Italy | Artemisia Gentileschi | Italian Baroque painter and printmaker who died in still-unexplained circumstances at the early age of 27. She was the most famous woman artist in early modern Bologna and established an academy for other women artists. |
| Eliška Krásnohorská | 1847 | Czech Republic | Susan B. Anthony | Czech feminist author. |
| Eliza Lucas Pinckney | 1722 | America | Anne Hutchinson | Woman who changed agriculture in colonial South Carolina, where she developed indigo as one of its most important cash crops. Its cultivation and processing as dye produced one-third the total value of the colony's exports before the Revolutionary War. Manager of three plantations, she had a major influence on the colonial economy. |
| Elizabeth Barrett Browning | 1806 | England | Emily Dickinson | One of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both Britain and the United States during her lifetime. |
| Elizabeth Bekker | 1738 | The Netherlands | Emily Dickinson | Dutch writer |
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton | 1815 | America | Susan B. Anthony | American suffragist, social activist, abolitionist, and leading figure of the early women's rights movement. |
| Elizabeth Carter | 1717 | England | Mary Wollstonecraft | English poet, classicist, writer and translator, and a member of the Bluestocking Circle. |
| Elizabeth Cellier | Flourished 1668–1688, London, England | England | Caroline Herschel | Catholic midwife in seventeenth-century England. She stood trial for treason in 1679 for her alleged part in the "Meal-Tub Plot" against the future James II but was acquitted. She later became a pamphleteer and made attempts to advance the field of midwifery. |
| Elizabeth Cheron | 1648 | France | Artemisia Gentileschi | 17th century poet, musician, artist, and academic. |
| Elizabeth Danviers | 1545/1550 | England | Elizabeth R. | English noblewoman. |
| Elizabeth Druzbacka | 1695 or 1698 | Poland | Emily Dickinson | Polish poet. |
| Elizabeth Farren | circa 1759 | England | Artemisia Gentileschi | English actress of the late 18th century. |
| Elizabeth Fry | 1780 | England | Margaret Sanger | English prison reformer, social reformer and, as a Quaker, a Christian philanthropist. She has sometimes been referred to as the "angel of prisons". Fry was a major driving force behind new legislation to make the treatment of prisoners more humane, and she was supported in her efforts by the reigning monarch. |
| Elizabeth Garrett Anderson | 1836 | England | Elizabeth Blackwell | English physician and feminist, the first Englishwoman to qualify as a physician and surgeon in Britain, the co-founder of the first hospital staffed by women, the first dean of a British medical school, the first female doctor of medicine in France, the first woman in Britain to be elected to a school board and, as Mayor of Aldeburgh, the first female mayor and magistrate in Britain. |
| Elizabeth Gurley Flynn | 1890 | America | Margaret Sanger | Labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral. |
| Elizabeth Hamilton | She was most probably born on 25 July 1756, though the date is often given as 1758. | Scotland | Mary Wollstonecraft | Scottish essayist, poet, satirist and novelist. |
| Elizabeth Hoby | 1528 | England | Elizabeth R. | English noblewoman. She was an influential member of Queen Elizabeth I's court and was known in her time for her refined poetry as well as her musical talent. In 1596, she was a vocal opponent of the reconstruction of Blackfriars Theatre in that London district. |
| Jane Weston | 1582 | England, Czech Republic | Elizabeth R. | English-Czech poet, mostly known for her Neo-Latin poetry. She had the unusual distinction for a woman of the time of having her poetry published. |
| Elizabeth Lucar | 1510 | England | Elizabeth R. | English calligrapher. She was the author of Curious Calligraphy (1525) the first English essay on calligraphy, and she was also fluent in Latin, Spanish, and Italian, and an accomplished musician and needleworker. |
| Elizabeth Montagu | 1718 | England | Mary Wollstonecraft | British Social reformer and founder of Bluestockings group. |
| Elizabeth Ney | 1833 | Germany, America | Georgia O’Keeffe | Celebrated German-born sculptor who spent the first half of her life and career in Europe, producing sculpted works of famous leaders such as Otto von Bismarck, Giuseppe Garibaldi and King George V of Hanover. At age 39, she immigrated to Texas with her husband Edmund Montgomery and became a pioneer in the development of art there. Some of her most famous works during her Texas period included sculptures of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin. Her works can be found in the Texas State Capitol, the US Capitol, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. |
| Elizabeth | 1207 | Germany | Hildegarde of Bingen | Princess of the Kingdom of Hungary, Landgravine of Thuringia, Germany, and a greatly venerated Catholic saint who was an early member of the Third Order of St. Francis, by which she is honored as its patroness. Elizabeth was married at the age of 14, and widowed at 20. After her husband's death she sent her children away and regained her dowry, using the money to build a hospital where she herself served the sick. She became a symbol of Christian charity after her death at the age of 24 and was quickly canonized. |
| Elizabeth of Schönau | 1126 | Germany | Hildegarde of Bingen | German Benedictine visionary. |
| Elizabeth Petrovna | 1709 | Russia | Elizabeth R. | Empress of Russia from 1741 until her death. |
| Elizabeth Southern | Unknown | England | Petronilla de Meath | One of the accused witches in the trials of the Pendle witches in 1612, which are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. She died while awaiting trial. |
| Elizabeth Stagel | c. 1300 | Switzerland | Hrosvitha | Dominican nun and prioress of the Töss Convent. |
| Elizabeth Vesey | 1715 | Ireland | Mary Wollstonecraft | Wealthy intellectual connected to the Bluestockings group - a women's social and educational circle. |
| Ellen Richards | 1842 | America | Margaret Sanger | Industrial and environmental chemist in the United States during the 19th century. |
| Elpinice | Flourished c. 450 BC | Greece | Aspasia | Noble woman of classical Athens. |
| Emilia Pardo-Bazán | 1851 | Spain | Virginia Woolf | Galician (Spanish) novelist, journalist, essayist, critic and scholar from Galicia. |
| Emilie du Chatelet | 1706 | France | Caroline Herschel | French mathematician, physicist, and author during the Age of Enlightenment. Her main achievement is considered to be her translation and commentary on Isaac Newton's work Principia Mathematica. The translation, published posthumously in 1759, is still considered the standard French translation. |
| Emilie Snethlage | 1868 | Germany and Brazil | Elizabeth Blackwell | German-born Brazilian naturalist and ornithologist who worked on the bird fauna of the Amazon. Snethlage collected in Brazil from 1905 until her death. |
| Emily Blackwell | 1826 | England and the United States | Elizabeth Blackwell | Second woman to earn a medical degree at what is now Case Western Reserve University, and the third openly identified woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. |
| Emily Brontë | 1818 | England | Emily Dickinson | Author of the novel Wuthering Heights which challenged strict Victorian ideals of the day, including religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality. |
| Emily Carr | 1871 | Canada | Georgia O’Keeffe | Canadian artist and writer heavily inspired by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a Modernist and Post-Impressionist painting style. |
| Emily Faithfull | 1835 | England | Elizabeth Blackwell | English women's rights activist, and publisher. |
| Emma Goldman | 1869 | Russia and the United States | Margaret Sanger | Anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. |
| Emma Paterson | 1848 | England | Margaret Sanger | An English feminist and trade unionist. |
| Emma Willard | 1787 | America | Emily Dickinson | American women's rights activist who dedicated her life to education. She worked in several schools and founded the first school for women's higher education, the Troy Female Seminary in Troy, New York. With the success of her school, Willard was able to travel across the country and abroad, to promote education for women. The Troy Female Seminary was renamed the Emma Willard School in 1895 in her honor. |
| Emmeline Pankhurst | 1858 | England | Susan B. Anthony | British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement who helped women win the right to vote. |
| Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence | 1867 | England | Susan B. Anthony | British women's rights activist. |
| Emmy Noether | 1882 | Germany and the United States | Elizabeth Blackwell | German mathematician known for her contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. She was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl, and Norbert Wiener as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. As one of the leading mathematicians of her time, she developed the theories of rings, fields, and algebras. In physics, Noether's theorem explains the connection between symmetry and conservation laws. |
| Enheduanna | c. 2050 BC | Sumer | Ishtar | Sumerian priestess of Inanna. Earliest recorded author. Wrote poetry and hymns. |
| Ende | Unknown | Spain | Hrosvitha | Manuscript illuminator who worked on the 10th-century codex known as the Gerona Beatus. It contains Beatus of Liébana's Commentary on the Apocalypse, paired with Jerome's commentary on the Book of Daniel. Ende, who is believed to have provided most of the illustrations, signed her name in the codex as Ende pintrix et d[e]i aiutrix, meaning "Ende, woman painter and servant of God." |
| Engleberga | c. 830 | Italy | Theodora | Wife of Louis II, Holy Roman Emperor, she remained the Holy Roman Empress to his death on 12 August 875, although she did not play a role in political life until after the death of his father, Lothair I, in 855. |
| Epicharis | unknown; died 65 | Ancient Rome | Hypatia | An Ancient Roman freedwoman and a member of the Pisonian conspiracy against the emperor Nero |
| Ereshkigal | Mythical | Sumer | Kali | Goddess of death |
| Erinna | Flourished about 600 BC (however, according to Eusebius, she was well known in 352 BC) | Greece | Sappho | Greek poet. Her best-known poem was the Distaff (Greek Ἠλᾰκάτη). |
| Esther | Biblical, flourished c. 450 BC | Persia | Judith | Eponymous heroine of the Book of Esther. |
| Etheldreda | About 636 | England | Trotula | An Anglo-Saxon saint known, particularly in a religious context, as Etheldreda or Audrey. She was an East Anglian princess, a Fenland and Northumbrian queen and Abbess of Ely. |
| Ethylwyn | Unknown | England | Hrosvitha | A tenth century noblewoman known for her embroidery work and encounter with Saint Dunstan. |
| Eugenia | Unknown; died c. 258 | Ancient Rome | Saint Bridget | An early Christian Roman martyr. |
| Europa | Mythical | Crete | Snake Goddess | Phoenician princess carried off to Crete by Zeus in the guise of a white bull. They had three sons there; Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. Afterwards, she married Asterion, King of Crete, who raised her sons as his own. |
| Euryleon | Fl. c. 370 BC | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | A celebrated woman Olympic charioteer. Euryleonis was an athlete from Sparta who won the 2 horse chariot races of the Ancient Olympic Games in 368 BC. She is sometimes referred to a princess, wealthy woman, and horse breeder. |
| Eurynome | Mythical | Greece | Primordial Goddess | Goddess of all things. |
| Eurypyle | Mythical | Near East | Amazon | Amazon leader of women's expedition against Babylon. |
| Eustochium | c. 368 | Rome and Palestine | Marcella | A saint and an early Desert Mother. |
| Eve | Ancient times | Garden of Eden; rest of world | Judith | A figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, she was the first woman. |
| Failge | Unknown; died 1451 | Ireland | Eleanor of Aquitaine | A fifteenth-century Gaelic Irish noblewoman (d. 1451 in Ireland) who was mainly remembered for her hospitality and piety. She earned the nickname Mairgréag an Einigh ('Margaret of the Hospitality') after hosting two incredible feasts in the year 1433 and went on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in 1445. |
| Fanny Burney | 1752 | England | Emily Dickinson | An English novelist, diarist and playwright. |
| Fanny Mendelssohn | 1805 | Germany | Ethel Smyth | A German pianist and composer. |
| Faustina Bordoni | 1697 | Italy | Ethel Smyth | An Italian mezzo-soprano. |
| Fede Galizia | 1578 | Italy | Artemisia Gentileschi | An Italian Renaissance painter, a pioneer of the still life genre. |
| Federica Montseny | 1905 | Spain | Margaret Sanger | A Spanish anarchist, intellectual and Minister of Health during the social revolution that occurred in Spain parallel to the Civil War. She is also known as a novelist and essayist. |
| Fibors | c. 1130 | France | Eleanor of Aquitaine | The earliest attestable trobairitz, active during the classical period of medieval Occitan literature at the height of the popularity of the troubadours. |
| Finola O'Donnel | Unknown; died 1528 | Ireland | Hildegarde of Bingen | A 15th-century Irish noblewoman remembered for cofounding the Franciscan Monastery in Donegal. |
| Flavia Julia Helena | c.  250 | Ancient Rome | Marcella | The consort of the Roman emperor Constantius Chlorus and the mother of the emperor Constantine the Great. She is an important figure in the history of Christianity and the world due to her major influence on her son and her own contributions in placing Christianity at the heart of Western Civilization. |
| Florence Nightingale | 1820 | England | Elizabeth Blackwell | A celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a manager of nurses trained by her during the Crimean War, where she organized the tending to wounded soldiers. |
| Fortuna | Mythical | Rome | Snake Goddess | Goddess of turning wheel, divination, fertility |
| Frances Brooke | 1724 | England | Emily Dickinson | An English novelist, essayist, playwright, and translator. |
| Frances Harper | 1825 | America | Sojourner Truth | An African-American abolitionist, poet and author. She was also active in other types of social reform and was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which advocated the federal government taking a role in progressive reform. |
| Frances Perkins | 1880 | America | Margaret Sanger | The U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, the longest serving in that position, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition. She and Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes were the only original members of the Roosevelt cabinet to remain in office for his entire presidency. |
| Frances Power Cobbe | 1822 | Ireland | Susan B. Anthony | An Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist, and leading women's suffrage campaigner |
| Frances Willard | 1839 | America | Susan B. Anthony | An American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. |
| Frances Wright | 1825 | Scotland, America | Susan B. Anthony | A Scottish-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, abolitionist, and social reformer, who became a U. S. citizen in 1825. That year she founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee as a utopian community to prepare slaves for emancipation, intending to create an egalitarian place, but it lasted only three years. Her Views of Society and Manners in America (1821) brought her the most attention as a critique of the new nation. |
| Francesca Caccini | 1587 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | An Italian composer, singer, lutenist, poet, and music teacher of the early Baroque era. She was also known by the nickname "La Cecchina", originally given to her by the Florentines and probably a diminutive of "Francesca". She was the daughter of Giulio Caccini. Her only surviving stage work, La liberazione di Ruggiero, is widely considered the oldest opera by a woman composer. |
| Francesca of Salerno | Unknown | Italy | Trotula | A physician who is recorded as receiving a doctorate in surgery from the University of Salerno in 1321. Her degree reads, in part, "Whereas the laws allow women to practice medicine, and whereas, from the viewpoint of good morals, women are best adapted to the treatment of their own sex, we, having received the oath of humility, permit the said Francesca to practice the said art of healing." |
| Francisca de Lebrija | Unknown | Spain | Christine de Pisan | A 16th-century lecturer at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain. |
| Françoise de Maintenon | 1635 | France | Mary Wollstonecraft | The second wife of King Louis XIV of France. Her marriage to the king was never officially announced or admitted, though she was very influential at court. She started a school for girls from poorer noble families. |
| Frau Ava | c. 1060 | Germany | Hrosvitha | The first named female writer in any genre in the German language. |
| Frau Cramer | 1656 | Germany, The Netherlands | Caroline Herschel | An accomplished Dutch midwife, known for her extensive journal of birthing accounts in the Early Modern Era. |
| Fredegund | Unknown; died 597 | France | Theodora | The Queen consort of Chilperic I, the Merovingian Frankish king of Soissons. |
| Frederika Bremer | 1801 | Sweden | Susan B. Anthony | A Swedish writer and a feminist activist. She had a large influence on the social development in Sweden, especially in feminist issues. |
| Freya | Mythical | Norway | Fertile Goddess | Goddess of love, marriage, fertility |
| Frida Kahlo | 1907 | Mexico | Georgia O’Keeffe | A Mexican painter who is best known for her self-portraits. |
| Frija | Mythical | Germany | Fertile Goddess | Goddess of marriage, love and home |
| Gabriela Mistral | 1889 | Chile | Virginia Woolf | A Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and feminist. She was the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. |
| Gabriele Münter | 1877 | Germany | Georgia O’Keeffe | A German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. |
| Gabrielle Petit | 1893 | Belgium | Margaret Sanger | A Belgian woman who spied for the British Secret Service during World War I. Executed in 1916, she became a Belgian national heroine after the war's end. |
| Gaia | Mythical | Greece | Primordial Goddess | Earth mother |
| Galla Placidia | 388 | Ancient Rome | Marcella | Daughter of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, she was the Regent for Emperor Valentinian III from 423 until his majority in 437, and a major force in Roman politics for most of her life. She was consort to Ataulf, King of the Goths from 414 until his death in 415, and briefly Empress consort to Constantius III in 421. |
| Gaspara Stampa | 1523 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | An Italian poet. She is considered to have been the greatest woman poet of the Italian Renaissance, and she is regarded by many as the greatest Italian woman poet of any age. |
| Gebjon | Mythical | Sweden | Primordial Goddess | Fertility goddess |
| Geillis Duncan | Unknown | Scotland | Petronilla de Meath | Scottish woman accused of being a witch. |
| Genevieve d'Arconville | 1720 | France | Caroline Herschel | A French author and chemist. |
| Genevieve | c. 419 | France | Saint Bridget | The patron saint of Paris in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition. |
| George Eliot | 22 November 1819 | England | Emily Dickinson | Author, translator, journalist. Wrote Middlemarch, Silas Marner, Daniel Deronda, Adam Bede, among other works. |
| George Sand | 1804 | France | Emily Dickinson | A French novelist and memoirist. |
| Georgiana Cavendish | 1757 | England | Elizabeth R. | The first wife of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, and mother of the 6th Duke of Devonshire. |
| Germaine de Staël | 1766 | France, Switzerland | Mary Wollstonecraft | An important writer, and one of Napoleon's main opponents. |
| Gertrude Käsebier | 1852 | America | Georgia O’Keeffe | One of the most influential American photographers of the early 20th century. |
| Gertrude of Hackeborn | 1232 | Germany | Hildegarde of Bingen | The abbess of the Benedictine convent of Helfta, near Eisleben in modern Germany. |
| Gertrude of Nivelles | c. 621 | Belgium | Hrosvitha | A seventh-century abbess who, with her mother Itta, founded the Benedictine monastery of Nivelles in present-day Belgium. |
| Gertrude Stein | 1874 | United States, France | Natalie Barney | Celebrated modernist writer, poet, and playwright. |
| Gertrude Svensen | 1656 | Sweden | Petronilla de Meath | A confessed witch whose confession marked the beginning of the Mora witch trial and eventually the Swedish witch trials. |
| Gertrude the Great | 1256 | Germany | Hildegarde of Bingen | A German Benedictine, mystic, and theologian. |
| Gisela of Kerzenbroeck | Unknown; died by 1300 | Germany | Hrosvitha | A nun in the northern German city of Rulle who probably worked most of her life writing and illustrating manuscripts, as well as being choirmistress. |
| Gisela | 757 | France | Hrosvitha | A nun at Chelles Abbey, where she was eventually made abbess. |
| Giustina Renier Michiel | 1755 | Italy | Caroline Herschel | An aristocratic woman who helped intellectual and social Venetian life flourish. |
| Glueckel von Hameln | 1646 | Germany | Anna van Schurman | A Jewish businesswoman and diarist, whose account of life provides scholars with an intimate picture of German Jewish communal life in the late-17th-early 18th century Jewish ghetto. |
| Golda Meir | 1898 | Kiev, Russian Empire, Present-day Ukraine; Israel | Margaret Sanger | Fourth Prime Minister of Israel, one of 24 signatories (including two women) of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. |
| Goody Glover | Unknown; died 1688 | Ireland, America | Petronilla de Meath | The last person to be hanged in Boston as a witch, which occurred in 1688, although the Salem witch trials in nearby Salem, Massachusetts occurred mainly in 1692. |
| Gormlaith | c. 960 | Ireland | Hrosvitha | Supposedly the cause of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 due to encouraging the fighting, although this was only recorded in writing long after her death and thus is probably not true. |
| Grace O'Malley | c. 1530 | Ireland | Elizabeth R. | Ran a shipping and trading business inherited from her father; sometimes considered a pirate. |
| Gracia Mendesa | 1510 | Portugal and Syria | Elizabeth R. | One of the wealthiest Jewish women of Renaissance Europe. |
| Guda | Unknown | Germany | Hrosvitha | A 12th-century nun and illuminator. |
| Guillemine | Unknown; died 1279–82 | Italy | Petronilla de Meath | A woman who preached that she would be resurrected as the Holy Spirit incarnate, and that this would lead to a new church led by women. |
| Gunda Beeg | Unknown | Germany | Susan B. Anthony | She was a women's dress reformer who helped found the first German organization for women's dress reform and designed a new uniform blouse for the German telephone and postal service. |
| Hannah Adams | 1755 | America | Anne Hutchinson | An author of books on comparative religion and early US history. She was the first woman in the United States who worked professionally as a writer. |
| Hannah Arendt | 1906 | Germany, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, France, and America | Virginia Woolf | A German-born political theorist. |
| Hannah Crocker | 1752 | America | Anne Hutchinson | An American essayist and one of the first advocates of women's rights in America. |
| Hannah Höch | 1889 | Germany | Georgia O’Keeffe | A German Dada artist. |
| Hannah More | 1745 | England | Mary Wollstonecraft | An English religious writer and philanthropist. |
| Hannah Senesh | 1921 | Hungary, Mandatory Palestine, Yugoslavia | Margaret Sanger | She parachuted into Yugoslavia to rescue Hungarian Jews from the Nazis, but was captured and executed. |
| Hannah Woolley | 1622 | England | Anna van Schurman | An English writer who published early books on household management |
| Hannahanna | Mythical | Hittite Empire | Ishtar | "Grandmother" major deity |
| Harlind | Unknown; died 750 | Belgium | Hrosvitha | Saint and Benedictine abbess, created illuminated manuscript of the Christian Gospels with her sister Relindis of Maaseik. |
| Reinhild | Unknown; died 750 | Belgium | Hrosvitha | Saint and Benedictine abbess, created illuminated manuscript of the Christian Gospels with her sister Herlindis of Maaseik. |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe | 1811 | America | Sojourner Truth | An American abolitionist and author. |
| Harriet Hosmer | 1830 | America, Italy | Georgia O’Keeffe | An American sculptor. |
| Harriet Martineau | 1802 | England | Emily Dickinson | An English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist. |
| Harriet Tubman | 1822 | America | Sojourner Truth | An escaped slave who rescued about seventy others from slavery, and later worked for women's suffrage. |
| Hartense Lepaute | 1723–1788 | France | Caroline Herschel | Mathematician and astronomer. |
| Hashop | c. 2420 BC | Egypt | Hatshepsut | Another name for "Hatshepsut", who was Egypt's first woman pharaoh. |
| Hasta Hansteen | 1824 | Norway | Susan B. Anthony | A Norwegian painter, writer, and early feminist. |
| Hathor | Mythical | Egypt | Ishtar | Mother of sun god. |
| Hawisa | Unknown; died 1214 | England | Eleanor of Aquitaine | The daughter and heiress of William, Count of Aumale and Cicely, daughter and co-heiress of William fitz Duncan. |
| Hecate | Mythical | Greece | Kali | Goddess of the moon and underworld. |
| Hecuba | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | In the Iliad, Queen of Troy. |
| Hedwig Nordenflycht | 1718 | Sweden | Emily Dickinson | A Swedish poet, feminist and salon hostess. |
| Hedwig | 1174 | Germany | Hildegarde of Bingen | A saint, who served as Duchess of Silesia from 1201 and of Greater Poland from 1231, in addition to High Duchess consort of Poland from 1232 until 1238. |
| Hel | Mythical | Norway | Kali | Goddess of underworld |
| Helen Cornaro | 1646 | Italy | Anna van Schurman | The first woman to receive a doctoral degree from a university, which she did from the University of Padua. |
| Helen Diner | 1874 | Austria | Virginia Woolf | An Austrian feminist historian, intellectual, travel journalist, and writer. She wrote, among other things, Mothers and Amazons (1930), which was the first book to focus on women's cultural history. |
| Helen Keller | 1880 | America | Margaret Sanger | An American author, lecturer, and political activist, as well as the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree. |
| Helen of Troy | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Husband's attempts to lure her back started Trojan War. |
| Helena | Unknown; active during the 4th century BC in Egypt | Egypt | Sappho | A painter. |
| Helena Blavatsky | 1831 | Russia | Anne Hutchinson | Leading figure in the New Age movement, co-founded the Theosophical Society. |
| Helene Kottauer | Unknown | Hungary | Elizabeth R. | A handmaiden to Queen Elisabeth of Hungary, who dictated her own life story in German, and helped Queen Elisabeth in a successful royal succession plot. |
| Héloïse | c. 1090 | France | Hildegarde of Bingen | An abbess, nun, scholar, and writer, best known for her love affair and correspondence with Peter Abélard. |
| Henrietta Johnston | c. 1674 | America, unknown origin before that | Anne Hutchinson | The earliest recorded female artist and the first known pastelist working in the English colonies |
| Henrietta Szold | 1860 | United States | Margaret Sanger | Jewish Zionist leader and founder of Hadassah |
| Hera | Mythical | Greece | Fertile Goddess | Chief feminine deity, married to Zeus |
| Hermine Veres | 1815–1895 | Hungary | Emily Dickinson | Educator and feminist, founded the first secondary school for girls in Hungary |
| Herrad of Landsberg | c. 1130 | France | Hildegarde of Bingen | An Alsatian nun and abbess of Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges mountains, known for being the author of the pictorial encyclopedia Hortus deliciarum (The Garden of Delights). |
| Hersend | Fl. 1249–1259 | France | Hildegarde of Bingen | A French female surgeon who went on the Seventh Crusade in 1249 with King Louis IX of France. |
| Hersilia | c. 800 BC | Rome | Sophia | Hero of the Rape of the Sabine Women |
| Hester Stanhope | 1776 | Britain | Mary Wollstonecraft | A British adventurer, socialite, and traveler. In 1815 she did the first modern excavation in the history of Holy Land archeology. |
| Hestiaea | Unknown | Alexandrea Troas near modern Turkey | Hypatia | Greek grammarian and Homeric scholar, influenced Strabo's Homeric scholarship |
| Hiera | Mythical | Asia Minor | Amazon | General of army of Mysian women who fought in Trojan War |
| Hilda of Whitby | c. 614 | England | Hrosvitha | A saint and the founding abbess of the monastery at Whitby. |
| Hipparchia | Flourished c. 325 BC | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | A Cynic philosopher |
| Hippo | Unknown | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | A Greek woman mentioned by the author Valerius Maximus as an example of chastity, and included among the Famous Women written about by Giovanni Boccaccio in the 14th century. It is said that she was abducted by an enemy fleet and threw herself overboard to her death rather than be raped by her captors. |
| Hippolyte | 13th century BC | Scythia | Amazon | Co-ruler with sisters of Amazon capital of Themiscyra. |
| Honorata Rodiana | 1403 | Italy | Artemisia Gentileschi | A "semi-legendary" Italian painter and condottiera. |
| Hortensia | Unknown | Ancient Rome | Hypatia | An orator, best known for giving a speech in 42 BC in front of the members of the Second Triumvirate that resulted in the partial repeal of a tax on wealthy Roman women. |
| Hortensia von Moos | 1659 | Switzerland | Anna van Schurman | Swiss scholar who had extensive knowledge of many subjects, including theology and medicine. Known for her writings on the status of women and is regarded as a precursor by the Swiss women's movement. |
| Huldah | Unknown | Ancient Israel | Judith | A prophet mentioned briefly in the Bible in 2 Kings 22, and 2 Chronicles 34. |
| Hygeburg | Flourished 780 | Germany | Hrosvitha | An Anglo-Saxon nun at the Abbey of Heidenheim in Germany, who wrote a life of Willibald, and a life of Willibald's brother Wynnebald. |
| Ida B. Wells | 1862 | America | Sojourner Truth | A leader in the civil rights movement, who documented lynching in the United States, showing that it was not caused by black criminality but rather by whites wishing to control and punish blacks. She also established women's organizations. |
| Ida Kaminska | 1899 | Russian Empire | Georgia O’Keeffe | A Polish-Jewish actress. |
| Ida Pfeiffer | 1797 | Austria | Mary Wollstonecraft | An Austrian travel book author and traveler. |
| Ilmatar | Mythical | Finland | Primordial Goddess | Virgin daughter of air |
| Iltani | c. 1685 BC | Babylonia | Ishtar | Wealthy priestess |
| Ima Shalom | Unknown | Ancient Rome | Hypatia | One of the few women who are named and quoted in the Talmud. |
| Imogen Cunningham | 1883 | America | Georgia O’Keeffe | An American photographer. |
| Inanna | Mythical | Sumer | Ishtar | Queen of heaven |
| Inessa Armand | 1874 | France and Russia | Margaret Sanger | A communist politician. |
| Ingrida | Unknown; died 28 March 1524 | Sweden | Christine de Pisan | A Swedish nun who lived at the convent of Saint Birgitta in Vadstena, famous for having written of her love to a knight named Axel Nilsson. |
| Irène Joliot-Curie | 1897 | France | Elizabeth Blackwell | A scientist who was given the 1935 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, along with her husband, for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. |
| Irene | c. 752 | Byzantine Empire | Theodora | Byzantine empress regnant from 797 to 802, previously empress consort from 775 to 780, and empress dowager and regent from 780 to 797. |
| Irkalla | Mythical | Babylonia | Kali | Babylonian goddess of the underworld |
| Isabel de Guevara | Flourished 1530 | Spain, Argentina | Sacajawea | One of the few European women to accept the offer from the Spanish crown to join colonizing missions during the first wave of Spanish conquest and settlement of the New World. |
| Isabel of France | 1224 | France | Hildegarde of Bingen | Considered a saint by the Franciscan Order, she founded the Poor Clare Monastery of Longchamp. |
| Isabel Pinochet | 1845 | Chile | Sacajawea | She led the reform of girls' education in Chile. |
| Isabela Czartoryska | 1746 | Poland | Anna van Schurman | A Polish aristocrat, art collector, and writer. She also founded Poland's first museum, the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków. |
| Isabella Andreini | 1562 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | An Italian actress and writer; her character, the Isabella role of the commedia dell'arte, was named after her. |
| Isabella Bird Bishop | 1831 | England | Mary Wollstonecraft | An explorer, naturalist, photographer, and writer. She co-founded the John Bishop Memorial hospital with Fanny Jane Butler, and she was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. |
| Isabella Cortese | Flourished 1561 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | An Italian alchemist and writer of the Renaissance. |
| Isabella de Forz | 1237 | England | Eleanor of Aquitaine | One of the richest women in England. A weir on the River Exe is named after her, and she is the subject of at least two legends. |
| Isabella de Joya Roseres | c. 1508 | Spain | Elizabeth R. | A humanist, Latinist, philosopher, and specialist on the theology of Dun Scotus. |
| Isabella Losa | 1491 | Spain | Elizabeth R. | A doctor of theology. Founded a hospital at Loreto in Italy |
| Isabella I of Castile | 1451 | Spain | Elizabeth R. | Queen of Castile and León. United the Spanish kingdoms though her marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon concluding the Reconquista of Muslim Spain. Set up universities open to women and sponsored Christopher Columbus on his voyages of discovery. |
| Isabella of Lorraine | 1400 | Lorraine | Isabella d’Este | Suo jure Duchess of Lorraine from 1431 to 1453; also Queen consort of Naples from 1435 to 1442, and the titular queen consort from 1442 until her death. |
| Isadora Duncan | 1877 | America, Soviet Union, Western Europe | Georgia O’Keeffe | A pioneer of the interpretative movement in modern dance and an important figure in the arts and dance history. Known as the "Mother of Modern Dance". |
| Isak Dinesen | 1885 | Kenya, Denmark | Virginia Woolf | A Danish author, best known for Out of Africa and Babette's Feast. |
| Isis | Mythical | Egypt | Ishtar | Mother of Heaven/Queen of all Gods. One of the most important goddesses of ancient Egypt. Her cult subsequently spread throughout the Roman Empire |
| Isotta Nogarola | 1418 | Italy | Christine de Pisan | An Italian intellectual and writer. A humanist who wrote Latin poems, orations, dialogues, letters. Renowned for her scholarship and eloquence. |
| Jacobe Felicie | Flourished 1322 | Italy, France | Petronilla de Meath | An Italian physician active in Paris, France. |
| Jadwiga | 1373/1374 | Poland | Elizabeth R. | The first female monarch of the Kingdom of Poland, reigning from 1384 to her death in 1399. |
| Jane Addams | 1860 | America | Margaret Sanger | The first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, she is recognized as the founder of the social work profession in the United States. |
| Jane Anger | Unknown | England | Christine de Pisan | The first woman to publish a full-length defense of women in English, which was called Jane Anger Her Protection For Women, and published in 1589. |
| Jane Austen | 1775 | England | Emily Dickinson | One of the most widely read writers in English literature. |
| Jane Harrison | 1850 | Britain | Elizabeth Blackwell | One of the founders of modern studies in Greek mythology. |
| Jane of Sutherland | 1546 | Scotland | Elizabeth R. | A wealthy Scottish noblewoman who became the Countess of Sutherland due to her second marriage. |
| Jane Weir | Unknown | Britain | Petronilla de Meath | A woman who was charged with incest and witchcraft in 1670 and was executed. |
| Jeanne Campan | 1752 | France | Mary Wollstonecraft | An educator, writer, and lady-in-waiting. |
| Jeanne d'Albret | 1528 | Navarre | Elizabeth R. | The queen regnant of Navarre from 1555 to 1572. She was also the political and spiritual leader of the French Huguenot movement, and was important in the French Wars of Religion. |
| Jeanne de Montfort | c. 1295 | Brittany | Isabella d’Este | Consort Duchess of Brittany, who successfully defended the rights of her husband and son to the dukedom. |
| Jeanne de Pompadour | 1721 | France | Mary Wollstonecraft | A member of the French court who was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death in 1764. |
| Jeanne Dumée | 1660 | France | Caroline Herschel | Astronomer and author. |
| Jeanne Louise Farrenc | 1804 | France | Ethel Smyth | A composer, teacher, and virtuosa pianist. |
| Jeanne Mance | 1606 | France, New France | Caroline Herschel | Nurse and settler of New France. She was one of the founders of Montreal and in 1645 founded Montreal's first hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal. |
| Jeanne Manon Roland | 1754 | France | Mary Wollstonecraft | Supporter of the French Revolution and important member of the Girondist faction. |
| Jeanne Marie Guyon | 1648 | France | Anna van Schurman | A French mystic. |
| Jeanne Recamier | 1777 | France | Natalie Barney | A society leader who hosted a salon. |
| Jeannette Rankin | 1880 | America | Margaret Sanger | The first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. |
| Jenny Lind | 1820 | Sweden | Ethel Smyth | An opera singer. |
| Jezebel | Fl. 9th century BC | Ancient Israel | Judith | According to the Bible, she convinced her husband King Ahab to encourage the worship of gods other than Yahweh, and herself persecuted Yahweh's prophets, as well as making up false evidence against a person who refused to sell property to her husband. She was killed by her own court retinue. |
| Jeanne of Navarre | 1273 | France and Navarre | Eleanor of Aquitaine | She reigned as queen regnant of Navarre and also served as queen consort to Philip IV of France. |
| Joan of Arc | c. 1412 | France | Petronilla de Meath | A saint who helped lead France to victory in the Hundred Years' War. |
| Joanna Baillie | 1762 | Scotland | Emily Dickinson | A poet and dramatist. |
| Joanna Koerton | 1650 | The Netherlands | Artemisia Gentileschi | An artist famous as a silhouette cutter. |
| Joanna | Unknown | Germany | Hrosvitha | The prioress of the monastery of Lothen in Germany, best remembered for her tapestry work. |
| Josefa Amar | 1749 | Spain | Mary Wollstonecraft | A writer who belonged to a group that were worried about the decadence of conditions of Spain and wanted to correct it by education. |
| Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez | 1773 | New Spain, Mexico | Sacajawea | An insurgent and supporter of the Mexican War of Independence. |
| Josephine Baker | 1906 | United States, France | Sojourner Truth | American/French actress and performer. First African-American woman to star in a major motion picture. Contributed to the Civil Rights Movement in the US and refused to perform before segregated audiences. Also helped the French resistance in WW2, receiving the medal Croix de Guerre and was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for her service. |
| Josephine Kablick | 1787 | Czechoslovakia | Caroline Herschel | A pioneering botanist and paleontologist. |
| Jovita Idar | 1885 | America | Sacajawea | An American journalist and activist for Mexican-American rights. |
| Judith Leyster | 1609 | Haarlem, Northern Netherlands | Artemisia Gentileschi | Dutch Golden Age painter. She was a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. |
| Judith Murray | 1751 | America | Anne Hutchinson | An early American advocate for women's rights, as well as an essayist, letter writer, playwright, and poet. |
| Julia Domma | AD 170 | Ancient Rome | Marcella | A Roman Empress famous for her great learning and political influence. |
| Julia Maesa | c. AD 165 | Ancient Rome | Marcella | Grandmother of the Roman emperors Elagabalus and Alexander Severus, she was important in the ascension of each to the title of Emperor at the age of fourteen. |
| Julia Mamaea | Unknown | Emesene Kingdom | Marcella | A princess from the Syrian Roman Client Emesene Kingdom. |
| Julia Margaret Cameron | 1815 | India, Britain | Georgia O’Keeffe | A photographer who became famous for her portraits of celebrities, as well as photographs with legendary or heroic themes. |
| Julia Morgan | 1872 | America | Georgia O’Keeffe | An architect, best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. |
| Juliana Bernes | 1388 | England | Christine de Pisan | A writer on hawking, heraldry, and hunting, who is said to have been prioress of the Priory of St. Mary of Sopwell. |
| Juliana of Norwich | c. 1342 | England | Hildegarde of Bingen | An anchoress who is considered an important Christian mystic. |
| Julie de Lespinasse | 1732 | France | Natalie Barney | She owned a prominent salon in France. |
| Juno | Mythical | Rome | Fertile Goddess | Moon goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. |
| Justina Dietrich | 1636 | Germany | Caroline Herschel | A renowned German midwife. |
| Jutta | 1091 | Germany | Hildegarde of Bingen | An anchoress. |
| Kaahumanu | 1768 | Hawaii | Sacajawea | Queen Regent of Hawaii, champion of Hawaiian women's rights, powerful political figure. |
| Kallirhoe Parren | 1861 | Greece | Susan B. Anthony | A journalist and writer who launched the feminist movement in Greece. |
| Karen Horney | 1885 | Germany | Virginia Woolf | Psychoanalyst who questioned Freudian theories, credited with founding feminist psychology in response to Freud's theory of penis envy. |
| Karoline Pichler | 1793 | Austria | Mary Wollstonecraft | Novelist most famous for historical romance. |
| Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead | 1867 | Canada, America | Elizabeth Blackwell | An obstetrician who encouraged women in medicine. |
| Katharine Hepburn | 1907 | America | Georgia O’Keeffe | An actress. |
| Käthe Kollwitz | 1867 | Germany | Georgia O’Keeffe | A painter, printmaker, and sculptor. |
| Käthe Schirmacher | 1865 | Germany | Susan B. Anthony | A German activist for the rights of women. |
| Katherine Bethlen | 1700 | Hungary | Caroline Herschel | One of the earliest writers of memoirs in Hungary. |
| Katherine Sheppard | 1847 | England, New Zealand | Susan B. Anthony | New Zealand's most famous suffragette. |
| Katti Moeler | 1868 | Norway | Margaret Sanger | A children's rights advocate and feminist, best known today as the "advocate of mothers." |
| Kenau Hasselaer | 1526 | The Netherlands | Elizabeth R. | A folk hero due to her fearless defense of Haarlem against the Spanish invaders during its siege in 1573. |
| Khuwyt | c. 1950 BC | Egypt | Hatshepsut | One of the first female musicians recorded in history. |
| Kora | Fl. c. 650 BC | Sicyon, ancient Greece | Sappho | Credited, along with her father, with the invention of modeling in relief in the seventh century BC. |
| Kubaba | c. 2573 BC | Sumer | Ishtar | Former innkeeper and beer seller, came to throne, founded 3rd dynasty, queen. |
| Eleanor Butler | 1739 | Ireland, Wales | Natalie Barney | One of two upper-class women whose relationship fascinated and scandalized many. |
| Sarah Ponsonby | 1831 | Ireland, Wales | Natalie Barney | One of two upper-class women whose relationship fascinated and scandalized many. |
| Lady Beatrix | Unknown | England | Eleanor of Aquitaine | A noble lady of house de Vesci. |
| Lady Godiva | Flourished 1040 | England | Eleanor of Aquitaine | A noblewoman who according to legend rode naked (covered only by her own long hair) in order to convince her husband to end a tax on his tenants. |
| Margaret Beaufort | 1443 | England | Christine de Pisan | An important person in the Wars of the Roses, who also endowed Christ's and St John's Colleges at Cambridge. |
| Lady Uallach | Unknown; died 934 | Ireland | Hrosvitha | An Irish poet and Chief Ollam of Ireland. |
| Lalla | 1st Century BC | Ancient Rome | Sappho | Real name Iaia of Cyzicus, a Greek painter and sculptor who excelled in portraits of women. |
| La Malinche | c. 1496 or c. 1501 | Mexico | Sacajawea | She acted as an advisor, intermediary, interpreter, and lover for Hernán Cortés. |
| Lamia | Flourished 300 BC | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | A famous courtesan, and mistress of Demetrius Poliorcetes. |
| Lampedo | Legendary, 13th century BC | Greece | Amazon | Amazon queen mentioned in Roman historiography, co-ruled with sister Marpesia. The two were said to be the daughters of Mars. |
| Las Huelgas | 12th Century | Spain | Hildegarde of Bingen | Misinterpretation of a line in Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead's History of Women in Medicine, where an unnamed abbess of Las Huelgas - possibly Sancha Garcia, given the timeframe and description - is stated to have "ably combined the duties of priest and physician." |
| Laura Bassi | 1711 | Italy | Anna van Schurman | The first woman to earn a university chair in a scientific field of studies; specifically, she was appointed to the chair in experimental physics by the Bologna Institute of Sciences. |
| Laura Battiferri Ammanati | 1523 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | A poet. |
| Laura Cereta | 1469 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | One of the great female humanist and feminist writers of her time and place, and the first to put women's issues and her friendships with women at the center of her writing. |
| Laura Torres | Unknown | Mexico | Sacajawea | A journalist and founder of an early feminist organization, Admiradoras de Juárez. |
| Lavinia Fontana | 1552 | Italy | Artemisia Gentileschi | Italian painter. Considered first female artist outside a court or convent. |
| Laya | 1st Century BC | Ancient Rome | Hypatia | Another name for the painter and sculptor Iaia of Cyzicus. |
| Leah | Unknown | Ancient Israel | Judith | According to the Bible, one of two wives of Jacob and mother of six sons whose descendants became some of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. |
| Leonor d'Almeida | 1750 | Portugal | Mary Wollstonecraft | A noblewoman, painter, and poet. |
| Leela of Granada | 13th Century | Spain | Hrosvitha | A woman from Moorish Spain, said to be renowned for her great learning. |
| Leonora Baroni | 1611 | Italy | Artemisia Gentileschi | A composer, lutenist, singer, theorbist, and viol player. |
| Leontium | Fl.. 300 BC | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | An Epicurean philosopher. |
| Leoparda | Late 4th–early 5th century | Rome | Theodora | Physician |
| Levina Teerling | 1510–1520 | Belgium and England | Artemisia Gentileschi | A Flemish Renaissance miniaturist who served as a painter to the English court. |
| Liadain | Flourished in the 7th century AD | Ireland | Hrosvitha | A poet. |
| Libana | 10th Century | Spain | Hrosvitha | Andalusian poet and intellectual who lived under Caliph Al-Hakam II. |
| Lili Boulanger | 1893 | France | Ethel Smyth | A composer. |
| Lilith | Mythical | Garden of Eden | Judith | Adam's first wife before Eve, in Jewish folklore. As written by Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she slept with the archangel Samael. |
| Lilliard | Legendary | England and Scotland | Elizabeth R. | Lilliard is said to have fought at the Battle of Ancrum Moor following the death of her lover. |
| Lioba | c. 710 | England, Germany | Hrosvitha | A saint who was part of Boniface's mission to the Germans. |
| Livia Drusilla | 58 BC | Ancient Rome | Marcella | The adviser and wife of the Roman emperor Augustus. She was deified by Claudius. |
| Loretta | c. 1185 | England | Hildegarde of Bingen | Countess of Leicester |
| Lorraine Hansberry | 1930 | America | Virginia Woolf | Playwright and writer. |
| Lou Andreas-Salomé | 1861 | Germany, Italy and Russia | Natalie Barney | Author and psychoanalyst. |
| Louise Labé | c. 1520 or 1522 | France | Natalie Barney | A poet. |
| Louise Le Gras | 1591 | France | Caroline Herschel | A saint and the co-founder of the Daughters of Charity. |
| Louise Michel | 1830 | France | Margaret Sanger | An anarchist, medical worker, and school teacher. |
| Louise Nevelson | 1899 | Russia and the United States | Georgia O’Keeffe | A sculptor. |
| Louyse Bourgeois | 1563 | France | Caroline Herschel | Midwife to King Henry IV of France and his wife Marie de Médicis. |
| Lucretia Marinelli | 1571 | Italy | Anna van Schurman | A writer best known for The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men. |
| Lucretia Mott | 1793 | America | Susan B. Anthony | A women's rights activist and social reformer. |
| Lucretia | c. 600 BC | Etruria | Hatshepsut | Killed herself after being raped due to fear of being accused as an adulteress. |
| Lucrezia Borgia | 1480 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | The daughter of Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei; her family arranged several marriages for her to enhance their political standing. |
| Lucrezia Tornabuoni | 1427 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | A writer and important political adviser. |
| Lucy Stone | 1818 | America | Susan B. Anthony | An important abolitionist, orator, and women's rights activist. |
| Luisa de Carvajal | 1566 | Spain | Anna van Schurman | A noblewoman and religious poet and writer. |
| Luisa Moreno | 1907 | Guatemala and the United States | Sacajawea | A leader in the United States labor movement; in 1939 she convened the first American national Latino civil rights assembly, Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Española. |
| Luisa Roldan | 1652 | Spain | Artemisia Gentileschi | The first woman sculptor documented in Spain. |
| Luise Gottsched | 1713 | Germany | Anna van Schurman | One of the founders of modern German theatrical comedy, as well as an essayist, playwright, poet, and translator. |
| Luise Otto-Peter | 1819 | Germany | Susan B. Anthony | The founder of the organized German women's movement. |
| Luiza Todi | 1753 | Portugal and Russia | Artemisia Gentileschi | A mezzo-soprano opera singer. |
| Lydia | Unknown | Ancient Rome | Marcella | A woman mentioned in the New Testament who is considered the first documented convert to Christianity in Europe. |
| Lysistrata | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Heroine of the play Lysistrata. |
| Maacah | Ancient times | Ancient Israel | Judith | According to the Bible, the daughter of King David's son Absalom, Maacah was a queen and the mother or grandmother of King Asa. Asa removed Maacah from her royal position because she built an obscene memorial to the goddess Asherah. |
| Mabel | Unknown | England | Hrosvitha | An embroiderer. |
| Macha of the Red Tresses | Unknown | Ireland | Boadaceia | According to medieval legend and historical tradition, the only queen in the List of High Kings of Ireland. |
| Macha | Mythical | Celtic Ireland | Fertile Goddess | Fertility goddess |
| Macrina | c. 330 | Ancient Rome | Marcella | A nun in the Early Christian Church and a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Church. |
| Maddalena Buonsignori | Unknown | Italy | Christine de Pisan | A law professor at the University of Bologna. |
| Madderakka | Mythical | Lapland | Fertile Goddess | Goddess of childbirth |
| Madeleine de Demandolx | Unknown | France | Petronilla de Meath | A nun who was one of the alleged cases of demonic possession occurring among the Ursuline nuns of Aix-en-Provence (South of France) in 1611. |
| Madeleine de Sable | 1599 | France | Natalie Barney | A writer. |
| Madeleine de Scudéry | 1607 | France | Natalie Barney | A writer. |
| Magda Portal | 1900 | Peru | Sacajawea | A Peruvian author, feminist, poet, and political activist and leader. She was one of the founders of the APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) political party. |
| Mahaut of Artois | 1268 | France | Isabella d’Este | She inherited the County of Artois at her father's death in 1302; she was an able administrator and managed to defeat the many rebellions perpetrated by members of the nobility. |
| Makeda | b. 1020 BC | North Africa | Hatshepsut | The Ethiopian name for Queen of Sheba. She heard that King Solomon was very wise so she traveled to meet him with many gifts with the intention of questioning him. Her story is found in the Bible and the Qur'an. |
| Mama Oclo | c. 12th century | Peru | Hatshepsut | Co-founder of Inca Dynasty. Considered to be an intermediary between the creator god and humans, she was given the task of civilizing the earth and organizing its people. |
| Manto | Mythical | Greek myth | Sappho | The daughter of the blind prophet Tiresias. It was said that Manto's abilities in prophecy were much greater than her father's. She is one of the fortune-tellers and diviners whom Dante sees in the fourth pit of the eighth circle of the Inferno. |
| Margaret Brent | c. 1601 | England, colony of Maryland | Anne Hutchinson | An important founding settler of Maryland who was appointed as the executrix of the governor, Lord Calvert's, estate and as such helped ensure soldiers were paid and given food. |
| Margaret Cavendish | 1623 | England | Caroline Herschel | An aristocrat, a prolific writer, and a scientist. |
| Margaret of Lincoln | c. 1206 | England | Eleanor of Aquitaine | A wealthy noblewoman and heiress. |
| Margaret Fell Fox | 1614 | England | Anne Hutchinson | A founder of the Religious Society of Friends. |
| Margaret Fuller | 1810 | America | Emily Dickinson | A critic, journalist, and women's rights advocate whose book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States. |
| Margaret Jones | Unknown | Massachusetts Bay Colony | Petronilla de Meath | The first person to be executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts Bay Colony. |
| Margaret Mead | 1901 | America | Margaret Sanger | A cultural anthropologist. |
| Margaret Murray Washington | 1865 | America | Sojourner Truth | The principal of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, which later became Tuskegee University. |
| Margaret Murray | 1863 | United Kingdom | Elizabeth Blackwell | Important English Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, and folklorist. First female to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom. |
| Margaret O'Connor | Unknown; died 1451 | Ireland | Christine de Pisan | A noblewoman remembered for her piety and hospitality. |
| Margaret of Austria | 1480 | Austria | Elizabeth R. | Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1507 to 1515 and again from 1519 to 1530. |
| Marguerite of Bourgogne | 1250 | Unknown | Hildegarde of Bingen | Queen of Sicily |
| Margaret of Desmond | 1473 | Ireland | Elizabeth R. | Irish noblewoman. |
| Margaret of Porète | Unknown; died 1310 | France | Petronilla de Meath | A mystic and author, burned at the stake for heresy. |
| Margaret of Scandinavia | 1353 | Denmark | Elizabeth R. | Queen of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden and founder of the Kalmar Union, which united the Scandinavian countries for over 100 years. |
| Margaret Paston | Unknown | England | Christine de Pisan | Writer of some of the Paston Letters. |
| Margaret Philipse | c. 1637 | Province of New York | Anne Hutchinson | A merchant in the colonial Province of New York. |
| Margaret Roper | 1505 | England | Christine de Pisan | A writer and translator. |
| Margareta Karthauserin | Unknown | Germany | Christine de Pisan | A nun at the Dominican convent of Saint Catherine in Nuremberg and a very skilled scribe. |
| Margarete Forchhammer | 1863 | Denmark | Susan B. Anthony | An educator and women's rights activist. |
| Margarethe Dessoff | 1874 | Germany | Ethel Smyth | A choral conductor, singer, and voice teacher. |
| Margery Jourdemain | Unknown; before 1415 | England | Petronilla de Meath | A woman accused of treasonable witchcraft and burned at the stake. |
| Margery Kempe | c. 1373 | England | Christine de Pisan | A Christian mystic, best known for dictating The Book of Margery Kempe, which is considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. |
| Marguerita-Louise Couperin | 1675/76 or 1678/79 | France | Ethel Smyth | A soprano singer and harpsichordist. |
| Margaret of Navarre | 1492 | France | Elizabeth R. | Princess of France, Queen of Navarre, and Duchess of Alençon and Berry. |
| Marguerite Gérard | 1761 | France | Artemisia Gentileschi | A painter and etcher. |
| Marguerite-Antoinette Couperin | 1705 | France | Ethel Smyth | A harpsichordist, and the first female court musician to the King of France. |
| Maria Agnesi | 1718 | Italy | Anna van Schurman | A mathematician and philosopher. |
| Maria Alphaizuli | Unknown | Spain | Hrosvitha | A poet. |
| Maria Antonia Walpurgis | 1724 | Germany | Anna van Schurman | A composer, singer, harpsichordist and patron. |
| Maria Bartola | Unknown | Mexico | Sacajawea | The first historian of Mexico. |
| Maria Christine de Lalaing | Unknown | Tournai, Belgium | Elizabeth R. | Known for defending the city of Tournai against the duke of Parma. |
| Maria Cunitz | 1610 | Germany | Caroline Herschel | An astronomer. |
| Maria de Abarca | Unknown | Spain | Artemisia Gentileschi | A painter. |
| Maria de Agreda | Unknown | Spain | Anna van Schurman | A Franciscan abbess and spiritual writer. |
| Maria de Coste Blanche | c. 1520 | France | Elizabeth R. | A translator and noblewoman. |
| María del Refugio García | c. 1898 | Mexico | Sacajawea | A women's rights activist. |
| Maria de Ventadorn | Unknown | France | Eleanor of Aquitaine | A patron of troubadour poetry. |
| Maria de Zozoya | Unknown | Spain | Petronilla de Meath | A woman prosecuted for being a witch who died in prison. |
| Maria Edgeworth | 1768 | England and Ireland | Emily Dickinson | A writer. |
| Maria Kirch | 1670 | Germany | Caroline Herschel | Astronomer. |
| Maria Luisa Sanchez | 1910 | Chile | Sacajawea | More commonly known as María Luisa Bombal, she was an internationally acclaimed Chilean author. |
| Maria Mitchell | 1818 | America | Caroline Herschel | An astronomer who discovered "Miss Mitchell's Comet". |
| Maria Montessori | 1870 | Italy | Margaret Sanger | The founder of the Montessori method. |
| Maria Montoya Martinez | 1887 | America | Sacajawea | A Native American potter. |
| Maria Salvatori | Unknown | Italy | Petronilla de Meath | A woman accused of witchcraft. |
| Maria Sibylla Merian | 1647 | Holy Roman Empire, Dutch Republic | Artemisia Gentileschi | A naturalist and scientific illustrator. |
| Maria Stewart | 1803 | America | Sojourner Truth | A journalist, lecturer, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. |
| Maria Theresa | 1717 | Europe | Elizabeth R. | The only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. |
| Maria Theresia von Paradis | 1759 | Austria | Ethel Smyth | A blind musician and composer. |
| Marian Anderson | 1897 | America | Sojourner Truth | A singer. |
| Marianna Alcoforado | 1640 | Portugal | Anna van Schurman | A nun, possibly the author of the Letters of a Portuguese Nun. |
| Marianne Beth | 1889 | Austria, America | Elizabeth Blackwell | A lawyer and women's rights activist. |
| Marie Bashkirtsev | 1858 | Russian Empire | Georgia O’Keeffe | A diarist, painter, and sculptor. |
| Marie Bovin | 1773 | France | Elizabeth Blackwell | A midwife, inventor, and obstetrics writer. |
| Marie Champmeslé | 1642 | France | Artemisia Gentileschi | An actress. |
| Marie Colinet | c. 1560 | Switzerland, Germany | Caroline Herschel | A midwife and surgeon. |
| Marie Curie | 1867 | Poland, France | Elizabeth Blackwell | The first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, and the only person to win twice in multiple sciences. |
| Marie de France | Unknown | France, possibly England | Eleanor of Aquitaine | A poet. |
| Marie de l'Incarnation | 1599 | France, Canada | Anne Hutchinson | The leader of the group of nuns sent to establish the Ursuline Order in New France; she founded the oldest women's educational institution in North America. |
| Marie de Lafayette | Unknown; baptized 18 March 1634 | France | Mary Wollstonecraft | The author of France's first historical novel, La Princesse de Clèves. |
| Marie de Miramion | 1629 | France | Anna van Schurman | A woman known for her piety and the organizations she founded. |
| Marie de Sévigné | 1626 | France | Natalie Barney | An aristocrat known for her letter-writing. |
| Marie de' Medici | 1575 | France | Isabella d’Este | Queen of France |
| Marie du Deffand | 1697 | France | Natalie Barney | A hostess and patron of the arts. |
| Marie Dugès | 1730 | France | Elizabeth Blackwell | A midwife. |
| Marie Durocher | 1809 | Brazil | Elizabeth Blackwell | The first female doctor in Latin America. |
| Marie Geoffrin | 1699 | France | Natalie Barney | One of the leading women in the French Enlightenment. |
| Marie Heim-Vögtlin | 1845 | Switzerland | Elizabeth Blackwell | The first female Swiss physician and a co-founder of the first Swiss gynecological hospital. |
| Marie Iowa | c. 1786 | America | Sacajawea | The only female member of the Astor Expedition, which traveled overland from St. Louis, Missouri, to what became Astoria, Oregon, in 1811–12. |
| Marie LaChapelle | 1769 | France | Elizabeth Blackwell | The head of obstetrics at the Hôtel Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris. She is generally considered the mother of modern obstetrics. |
| Marie Laurencin | 1883 | France | Georgia O’Keeffe | A painter and printmaker. |
| Marie Lavoisier | 1758 | France | Caroline Herschel | A chemist. |
| Maria Le Jars de Gournay | 1565 | France | Anna van Schurman | A writer. |
| Marie of Champagne | 1145 | France | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII. Ruled as regent of Champagne three times, and was a noted patron of troubadours. |
| Marie Popelin | 1846 | Belgium | Elizabeth Blackwell | A Belgian feminist, lawyer, and political campaigner. |
| Marie Sallé | 1707 | France | Natalie Barney | A dancer and choreographer. |
| Marie Stopes | 1880 | Britain | Margaret Sanger | An author, palaeobotanist, academic, eugenicist, campaigner for women's rights, and pioneer in the field of birth control. |
| Marie Tussaud | 1761 | France, England | Mary Wollstonecraft | An artist, known for founding Madame Tussauds wax museum in London. |
| Marie Vernier | c. 1590 | France | Artemisia Gentileschi | An actress, commonly thought to be the first French actress to be known by name. |
| Martesia | Mythical, c. 13th century BC | Greece | Amazon | Amazon queen. Co-ruled with sister Lampedo. |
| Martha Baretskaya | Unknown | Novgorod | Christine de Pisan | According to legend and historical tradition, she led the republic's struggle against Muscovy between her husband's death and the city's eventual annexation by Ivan III of Russia in 1478. |
| Martha Graham | 1894 | America | Georgia O’Keeffe | A dancer. |
| Martha Mears | Unknown | England | Caroline Herschel | A midwife and author. |
| Martha of Bethany | Unknown | Ancient Israel | Marcella | A biblical figure described in the Gospels of Luke and John. |
| Martia Proba | Mythical | Britain | Saint Bridget | The mythical third female ruler and a regent of the Britons, as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. |
| Mary "Mother" Jones | 1837 | Ireland, America | Margaret Sanger | A labor and community organizer who cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World. |
| Mary Alexander | 1693 | America | Anne Hutchinson | An influential colonial era merchant in New York City. |
| Mary Müller | 1819 or 1820 | England and New Zealand | Susan B. Anthony | A New Zealand suffragist. |
| Mary Radcliffe | c. 1746 | Britain | Mary Wollstonecraft | An important British figure in the early feminist movement. |
| Mary Ann Shadd Cary | 1823 | America, Canada | Sojourner Truth | The first black woman publisher in North America and the first woman publisher in Canada. |
| Mary Astell | 1666 | England | Anna van Schurman | A feminist writer and rhetorician, known as "the first English feminist." |
| Mary Baker Eddy | 1821 | America | Anne Hutchinson | The founder of Christian Science. |
| Mary Bonaventure | After 1610 | Ireland | Anne Hutchinson | A Poor Clare and Irish historian. |
| Mary Cassatt | 1844 | America, France | Georgia O’Keeffe | A painter and printmaker. |
| Mary Church Terrell | 1863 | America | Susan B. Anthony | One of the first African-American women to earn a college degree, and a national activist for civil rights and suffrage. |
| Mary Dyer | c. 1611 | England | Anne Hutchinson | A Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. |
| Mary Walker | 1832 | America | Elizabeth Blackwell | An American feminist, abolitionist, prohibitionist, alleged spy, prisoner of war and surgeon. |
| Mary Esther Harding | 1888 | England, America | Virginia Woolf | The first significant Jungian psychoanalyst in the United States. |
| Mary Goddard | 1738 | America | Anne Hutchinson | An early American publisher and the first American postmaster. She was the first to print the Declaration of Independence with the names of the signatories. |
| Mary Hays | 1759 | England | Mary Wollstonecraft | A novelist. |
| Mary Lamb | 1764 | England | Caroline Herschel | A writer. |
| Mary Lee | 1821 | Ireland, Australia | Susan B. Anthony | A suffragist and social reformer in South Australia. |
| Mary Livermore | 1820 | America | Sojourner Truth | A journalist and advocate of women's rights. |
| Mary Lou Williams | 1910 | America | Ethel Smyth | A jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. |
| Mary Louise McLaughlin | 1847 | America | Georgia O’Keeffe | A ceramic painter and studio potter, and one of the originators of the art pottery movement that swept the United States. |
| Mary Lyon | 1797 | America | Emily Dickinson | She established Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) in South Hadley, Massachusetts in 1837 and served as its first president (or "principal") for 12 years. |
| Mary Magdalene | 1st century | Galilee | Marcella | A female disciple of Jesus who stood by him during his crucifixion after most of his male disciples had abandoned him; revered as a saint by the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches. It is popularly believed that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, and she is often depicted as the "penitent Magdalene." |
| Mary Manley | 1663 or c. 1670 | England | Mary Wollstonecraft | An author, playwright, and political pamphleteer. Her first name is actually Delarivier (sometimes spelt Delariviere, Delarivière or de la Rivière) or Delia. |
| Mary McLeod Bethune | 1875 | America | Sojourner Truth | An educator and civil rights leader best known for starting a private school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida. |
| Mary Monckton | 1746 | Britain | Mary Wollstonecraft | A literary hostess. |
| Mary Musgrove | c. 1700 | America | Sacajawea | She facilitated in the development of Colonial Georgia and became an important intermediary between Muscogee Creek Indians and the English colonists. |
| Mary of Bethany | Unknown | Ancient Israel | Marcella | A biblical figure described in the Gospels of John and Luke in the Christian New Testament. |
| Mary of Hungary | 1505 | Europe | Elizabeth R. | Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia as the wife of King Louis II, and was later Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. |
| Mary Read | c. 1690 | England | Natalie Barney | A pirate and one of the only two women to be convicted of piracy during the 18th century. |
| Mary Shelley | 1797 | London | Mary Wollstonecraft | Author of Frankenstein and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. |
| Mary Sidney | 1561 | England | Elizabeth R. | Mary Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke. One of the first English women to achieve a major reputation for her poetry and literary patronage. |
| Mary Somerville | 1780 | Scotland | Caroline Herschel | Science writer and polymath, at a time when women's participation in science was discouraged. She studied mathematics and astronomy, and was nominated to be jointly the first female member of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time as Caroline Herschel. |
| Mary Wortley Montagu | 1689 | England, Turkey | Mary Wollstonecraft | An aristocrat and writer. |
| Maryann | 8th Century | Spain | Hrosvitha | Same person as Maria Alphaizuli. |
| Mata Hari | 1876 | Netherlands | Natalie Barney | Born Margaretha Geertruida "Margreet" MacLeod, a Frisian exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy and executed by firing squad in France under charges of espionage for Germany during World War I |
| Mathilda of Germany | 1418 | Germany | Isabella d’Este | A princess and major patroness of the literary arts. |
| Mathilde of Tuscany | 1046 | Italy | Eleanor of Aquitaine | A powerful feudal ruler in northern Italy and the chief Italian supporter of Pope Gregory VII during the Investiture Controversy. |
| Matilda | 1080 | England | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Queen of England as the wife of King Henry I. She was known as "Good Queen Maud" for her charitable works. She also known as a patron of music and literature. |
| Matilda of Flanders | c. 1031 | England, Flanders | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Queen of England. Her husband was William the Conqueror. She often ruled Normandy as regent during his absences in England. |
| Mathilda | 955 | Germany | Hrosvitha | Daughter of Emperor Otto I. Became the first Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg in 966. |
| Maude | c.892 | Germany | Theodora | Saint Matilda, The wife of King Henry I of Germany, the first ruler of the Saxon Ottonian (or Liudolfing) dynasty, and thereby Duchess (consort) of Saxony from 912 and Queen (consort) of Germany (East Francia) from 919 until her husband's death in 936. Founded the Abbey of Quedlinburg. |
| Maximilla | 2nd century | Phrygia | Saint Bridget | One of the founders and prophets of Montanism, an early Christian movement. |
| Maya Deren | 1917 | Ukraine, America | Georgia O’Keeffe | One of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. |
| Meave | Mythical | Ireland | Boadaceia | Queen of Connacht in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. |
| Mechthild of Hackeborn | 1250 or 1241 | Germany | Hildegarde of Bingen | A Saxon Christian saint (from what is now Germany) and a Benedictine nun. |
| Mechthild of Magdeburg | c. 1207 | Germany | Hildegarde of Bingen | A medieval mystic, whose book Das fließende Licht der Gottheit (The Flowing Light of Divinity) described her visions of God. |
| Medb | Mythical | Ireland | Boadaceia | A goddess of sovereignty associated with Tara. |
| Medusa | Mythical | Greece | Amazon | Leader of Gorgons, Amazon |
| Megalostrata | Unknown | Ancient Greece | Sappho | A Spartan poet. |
| Melisande | 1105 | Israel | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Queen of Jerusalem from 1131 to 1153, and regent for her son between 1153 and 1161 while he was on campaign. |
| Mentuhetop | c. 2300 BC | Egypt | Hatshepsut | Queen of 11th Dynasty at Thebes. Practiced medicine. |
| Mercy Otis Warren | 1728 | America | Anne Hutchinson | A political writer and propagandist of the American Revolution. |
| Metrodora | c. AD 200 | Greece | Hypatia | A physician and author of the oldest medical text known to have been written by a woman, On the Diseases and Cures of Women. |
| Milla Granson | 1816 | America | Sojourner Truth | A pioneering educator. |
| Millicent Garrett Fawcett | 1847 | England | Susan B. Anthony | A feminist, intellectual, political and union leader, and writer, best known as a suffragist. |
| Minna Canth | 1844 | Finland | Susan B. Anthony | A writer and social activist. |
| Minna Cauer | 1841 | Germany | Susan B. Anthony | An educator, journalist and radical activist within the middle-class women's movement. |
| Miranda Stuart | c. 1789–1799 | Britain | Elizabeth Blackwell | A military surgeon in the British Army. |
| Miriam | Unknown | Ancient Israel | Judith | In the Bible, the elder sister of Moses and Aaron, and the only daughter of Amram and Yocheved. She appears first in the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. |
| Modesta Pozzo | 1555 | Italy | Christine de Pisan | A writer and poet. |
| Moero | Unknown | City of Byzantium | Sappho | A poet of the 3rd century BC from the city of Byzantium. |
| Molly Pitcher | 1754 (if Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley) | America | Anne Hutchinson | A nickname given to a woman said to have fought in the American Battle of Monmouth, who is generally believed to have been Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley. |
| Morrigan | Mythical | Celtic Ireland | Kali | Great queen |
| Mother Hutton | Unknown | England | Caroline Herschel | A pharmacist and herbalist responsible for the discovery of digitalis and its essential use in the curing of heart problems. |
| Muirgel | Unknown | Ireland | Boadaceia | An Irish woman who helped Ireland get rid of a powerful enemy. She killed one of their chieftains in 882. |
| Myrine | Mythical | Libya | Amazon | Led 30,000 Libyan women to battle against Gorgons, another Amazon tribe |
| Myrtis | Unknown | Ancient Greece | Sappho | Poet purported to be the teacher of Pindar of Thebes and Corinna of Tanagra. |
| Nadezhda Krupskaya | 1869 | Russia | Margaret Sanger | A Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and politician, and the wife of Vladimir Lenin from 1898 until his death in 1924. |
| Nadia Boulanger | 1887 | France | Ethel Smyth | A composer, conductor, musician, and teacher who taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century as well as leading living composers and musicians. |
| Nammu | Mythical | Sumer | Primordial Goddess | Controller of Primeval Waters |
| Nancy Ward | c. 1738 | America | Sacajawea | A Beloved Woman of the Cherokee, which means that she was allowed to sit in councils and to make decisions, along with the chiefs and other Beloved Women. |
| Nanno | Unknown | Ancient Greece | Sappho | A flute player who Mimnermus was in love with and who gave her name, Nanno, to one of his two books. |
| Naomi | Unknown | Ancient Israel | Judith | Ruth's mother-in-law in the Old Testament Book of Ruth. |
| Naqi'a | Fl. c. 680–627 BC | Assyria (modern-day Iraq) | Hatshepsut | Naqi'a-Zakutu, Assyrian queen, royal advisor. |
| Natalia Goncharova | 1881 | Russia | Georgia O’Keeffe | An avant-garde artist, painter, costume designer, writer, illustrator, and set designer. |
| Nathalie Zand | 1883 or 1884 | Poland | Elizabeth Blackwell | A neurologist. |
| Nefertiti | c. 1300 BC | Egypt | Hatshepsut | Egyptian Queen |
| Neith | Mythical | Egypt | Primordial Goddess | Wove the world on her loom, virgin goddess |
| Nell Gwyn | 1650 | England and Scotland | Artemisia Gentileschi | One of the first English actresses, and long-time mistress of King Charles II of England and Scotland. |
| Nelly Sachs | 1891 | Germany | Virginia Woolf | A poet and playwright. |
| Neobule | Unknown | Greece | Sappho | A woman addressed in the 7th-century BC Greek poetry of Archilochus. |
| Nephthys | Mythical | Egypt | Kali | Goddess of death |
| Nerthus | Mythical | Britain/Germany | Fertile Goddess | Earth mother |
| Nicaula | c. 980 BC | Ethiopia | Hatshepsut | Scholar, queen |
| Nicobule | Unknown | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | A woman who may have authored a work on the life of Alexander the Great. |
| Aruru | Mythical | Babylonia | Primordial Goddess | Helped create humans out of clay |
| Ninhursaga | Mythical | Sumer | Primordial Goddess | Mother of the Land |
| Ninon de l'Enclos | 1620 | France | Natalie Barney | An author, courtesan, freethinker, and patron of the arts. |
| Ninti | Mythical | Sumer | Fertile Goddess | Healing deity, cured Enkin's rib |
| Nitocris | 6th century BC | Assyria | Hatshepsut | Possibly mythical Queen of Babylon |
| Nofret | c. 1900 BC | Egypt | Hatshepsut | Queen, "ruler of all women", progressive leader of Egyptian women's rights |
| Nossis | Unknown | Italy, possibly Greece | Sappho | An ancient epigrammist and poet. |
| Novella d'Andrea | 1312 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | An Italian legal scholar and professor in law at the university of Bologna. |
| Nut | Mythical | Egypt | Primordial Goddess | Goddess of the sky |
| Octavia | 69 BC | Ancient Rome | Marcella | One of the most prominent women in Roman history; she was the sister of the first Roman Emperor, Augustus (known also as Octavian), half-sister of Octavia the Elder, and fourth wife of Mark Antony. |
| Odilla | c. 662 | Europe | Trotula | A saint venerated in the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. |
| Ofelia Uribe de Acosta | 1900 | Colombia | Sacajawea | A Colombian suffragist. |
| Olga | c. 890 | Rus' | Theodora | A saint and a ruler of Kievan Rus' as regent (945–c. 963) for her son, Svyatoslav. |
| Oliva Sabuco | 1562 | Spain | Elizabeth R. | A writer in holistic medical philosophy. |
| Olive Schreiner | 1855 | Lesotho, South Africa, Europe | Virginia Woolf | An author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual. |
| Olympe de Gouges | 1741 | France | Mary Wollstonecraft | A playwright and political activist. |
| Olympia Morata | 1526 | Italy | Isabella d’Este | A classical scholar. |
| Olympia | Sometime between 361 and 368 | Rome | Theodora | A Christian Roman noblewoman of Greek descent. |
| Olympias | c. 375 BC | Macedon | Boadaceia | A daughter of king Neoptolemus I of Epirus, the fourth wife of the king of Macedonia, Philip II, and mother of Alexander the Great. |
| Omeciuatl | Mythical | Mesoamerica | Primordial Goddess | Co-creator of spirit of human life |
| Orithyia | Legendary, c. 13th century BC | Scythia | Amazon | Amazon queen. Co-ruled with sisters Antiope and Hippolyte. |
| Phamphile | Flourished 1st century AD | Greece, possibly Egypt | Hypatia | A historian who lived in the reign of Nero. |
| Pandora | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Pandora's box |
| Pasiphae | Mythical | Crete | Snake Goddess | Moon goddess |
| Paula Modersohn-Becker | 1876 | Germany | Georgia O’Keeffe | A painter and one of the most important representatives of early expressionism. |
| Penelope Barker | 1728 | America | Anne Hutchinson | An activist in the American Revolution who in 1774 organised a boycott of British goods known as the Edenton Tea Party. |
| Penthelia | Exact date uncertain | Memphis, ancient Egypt | Sappho | Egyptian priestess-musician who served the creator god Ptah, the god of fire, in the temple of Memphis Ancient Egypt. Some sources ascribe to her the true authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey. |
| Penthesilea | d. 1187 BC | North Africa | Amazon | Last Amazon queen. |
| Perictyone | Fl. 5th century BC | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | The mother of the Greek philosopher Plato. |
| Pernette Du Guillet | c. 1520 | France | Elizabeth R. | A poet. |
| Kore | Mythical | Greece | Snake Goddess | Persephone, abducted by Hades to become Queen of the Underworld. |
| Phantasia | 12th century BC | Egypt | Hatshepsut | Storyteller, musician, poet. |
| Phile | Unknown | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | The first recorded benefactress and the first female magistrate in the ancient Greek city of Priene. |
| Philippa of Hainault | 1314 | England | Elizabeth R. | Queen of England |
| Phillipe Auguste | 12th Century | France | Hildegarde of Bingen | Allegedly a nun and medical woman, although no such person seems to have existed. Possibly a misreading of Philip II of France, known as Philip Augustus / Philippe Auguste. |
| Phillis Wheatley | c. 1753 | West Africa, America, England | Anne Hutchinson | The first published African-American female poet. |
| Philotis | Legendary | Ancient Rome | Hypatia | In Roman legend, slave (ancilla) whose plan resulted in an important victory of the Romans over the Latins in the late 4th century BC. |
| Phoebe | Unknown | Greece | Marcella | A first-century Christian woman mentioned by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, verses 16:1-2. A notable woman in the church of Cenchreae, she was trusted by Paul to deliver his letter to the Romans. |
| Pierrone | Unknown; died 1430 | France | Petronilla de Meath | A woman who said she saw visions of "God dressed in a long white robe with a red tunic underneath". She also tried to defend Joan of Arc, and was burned at the stake for that. |
| Plotina | 1st century | Hispania, Rome | Marcella | Roman Empress who used her influence to improve the quality of life for Roman society by creating fairer taxes, improving education, etc. |
| Pocahontas | c. 1595 | America, England | Sacajawea | A Virginia Indian notable for her association with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. |
| Pope Joan | Legendary | Europe | Trotula | According to popular legend, a woman who reigned as pope for a few years during the Middle Ages. |
| Porcia | Unknown | Ancient Rome | Marcella | A Roman woman who lived in the 1st century BC, best known for being the second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, the most famous of Julius Caesar's assassins, and for her suicide, reputedly by swallowing hot coals. |
| Praxagora | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Leader of group of cross dressing women in play by Aristophanes (The Assemblywomen.) |
| Praxilla | Unknown | Ancient Greece | Sappho | A lyric poet of the 5th century BC. |
| Wanda | Unknown | Poland | Theodora | The daughter of Krakus, legendary founder of Kraków. Upon her father's death, she became queen of the Poles, but committed suicide to avoid an unwanted marriage. |
| Priscilla | Unknown | Unknown | Marcella | A woman who lived, worked, and traveled with the Apostle Paul, who described her and her husband as his "fellow workers in Christ Jesus".[Rom. 16:3 NASB] |
| Properzia de' Rossi | c. 1490 | Italy | Artemisia Gentileschi | A renaissance sculptor. Originally praised for her skill at carving fruit stones, she went on to sculpt portrait busts and, eventually, to beat her male rivals for church commissions. However, tormented by unrequited love for a nobleman, she apparently sickened and died penniless. |
| Prudence Crandall | 1803 | America | Sojourner Truth | She admitted a 17-year-old African-American female student to her private school in the autumn of 1833, resulting in what is widely regarded as the first integrated classroom in the United States. |
| Puduhepa | c. 1280–1250 BC | Hittite Empire | Hatshepsut | Queen, priestess |
| Pulcheria | AD 398 or 399 | Eastern Roman Empire | Theodora | Saint and Empress of the Eastern Roman Empire. |
| Pythia | Legendary | Greece | Sophia | Consulted by psychics in temple named after her. |
| Python | Mythical | Greece | Snake Goddess | Female serpent that lived near temple of Delphi. |
| Rachel Carson | 1907 | United States | Margaret Sanger | American marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. |
| Rachel Katznelson | 1885 | Israel | Margaret Sanger | Prominent figure in Zionist movement. First Lady of Israel from 1963 to 1973, who was active in politics. |
| Rachel Ruysch | 1664 | The Hague, Northern Netherlands | Artemisia Gentileschi | 17th-century and 18th-century flower painter. She is recorded as earning well from her paintings and living to a great age. |
| Rachel Varnhagen | 1771 | Germany | Mary Wollstonecraft | German writer who hosted one of the most prominent salons of the late 18th and early 19th century. |
| Rachel | Unknown | Ancient Israel | Judith | In the Bible, the favorite of Biblical patriarch Jacob's two wives as well as the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, two of the twelve progenitors of the tribes of Israel. |
| Radclyffe Hall | 1880 | United Kingdom | Natalie Barney | English poet and author. Famous for the lesbian classic, "The Well of Loneliness", which caused a public uproar and subsequently subjected to an obscenity trial, after which it was banned for a while in the UK and the States. |
| Radegund | c .520 | Germany | Theodora | Thuringian princess and Frankish queen, who founded the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. |
| Rahonem | Old Kingdom | Egypt | Hatshepsut | Queen, priestess, music leader |
| Rachel | Unknown | France | Trotula | Yocheved, Miriam, and Rachel, daughters of the medieval Talmudic scholar Rashi, feature in several legends suggesting that they possessed unusual piety and scholarship. |
| Rebecca Lee | 1831 | United States | Elizabeth Blackwell | First African-American woman to become a physician in the United States. |
| Rebecca West | 1892 | England | Virginia Woolf | Feminist author, literary critic, journalist, and travel writer. Involved in women's suffrage movement. |
| Rebekah | Unknown | Ancient Israel | Judith | She appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. |
| Renée Vivien | 1877 | England, France | Natalie Barney | Symbolist poet known both for her work and her open lifestyle within the lesbian coterie of Paris, which included a long relationship with Natalie Barney. |
| Rhea | Mythical | Crete | Snake Goddess | Earth mother |
| Rhea Silva | Legendary | Rome | Sophia | Priestess, mother of Romulus and Remus |
| Rhiannon | Mythical | Wales | Kali | Great queen, magician, deity. |
| Romaine Brooks | 1874 | United States, France | Natalie Barney | American painter who lived in Europe, mostly in Paris. Famous mostly for her portraits of cross-dressing and gender-defying women, and for influencing Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations. A popular and prominent figure in the sapphic "sewing circles" of Paris. Partner of the infamous salon hostess Natalie Barney, and briefly the partner of the Russian dancer and Belle Epoque muse Ida Rubenstein. |
| Rosa Bonheur | 1822 | France | Georgia O’Keeffe | An animalière, realist artist, and sculptor; she is widely considered to have been the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century. |
| Rosa Luxemburg | 1871 | Germany and the Russian Empire | Margaret Sanger | A Marxist theorist, economist, philosopher, and revolutionary socialist. |
| Rosalba Carriera | 1673 | Italy | Artemisia Gentileschi | Venetian Rococo portrait artist who was famous and sought-after throughout much of Europe, especially in France. |
| Rosalia of Palermo | 1130 | Italy | Hildegarde of Bingen | The patron saint of Palermo in Italy, and three towns in Venezuela: El Hatillo, Zuata, and Anzoátegui. |
| Rosana Chouteau | Unknown | Osage Nation | Sacajawea | The first woman to be elected chief of the Osage Beaver Band, a clan of the Native American Osage Nation in Oklahoma. |
| Rose de Burford | 14th century | London, England | Christine de Pisan | 14th century merchant and business woman. The embroidered garments she sold adorned royalty and even the pope. |
| Rose Mooney | 1740 | Ireland | Ethel Smyth | Blind itinerant harpist. |
| Ruth | Unknown | Ancient Israel | Judith | The protagonist of the Book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible. |
| Ruth Benedict | 1887 | United States | Margaret Sanger | American anthropologist and folklorist. President of American Anthropological Association, first woman to be recognized as prominent leader of learned profession. |
| Saaredra Villanueva | 1897 | Bolivia | Sacajawea | Full name Etelvina Villanueva y Saavedra. Bolivian poet and educator who founded an important feminist group, Legión Femenina de Educación Popular de America. |
| Sabina von Steinbach | Early 13th century | Alsace/Eastern France | Artemisia Gentileschi | Legendary stonemason and daughter of Erwin von Steinbach, master builder at Notre Dame de Strasbourg. While it was not unthinkable for a woman to be a stonemason in the 13th century, scholars debate whether or not she actually existed. |
| Barbara | 3rd century | Turkey or Phoenicia | Hypatia | The patron saint of those in peril. She was a Christian martyr, betrayed and then beheaded by her own father. |
| Fabiola | Flourished 4th century | Rome | Marcella | Was a Roman matron among the company of noble Roman women who, under the influence of the Church father St. Jerome, gave up all earthly pleasures and devoted themselves to the practice of Christian asceticism and to charitable work. |
| Lucy | 283 | Sicily | Saint Bridget | A young Christian martyr who died during the Diocletianic Persecution. |
| Marcellina | circa 330/335 | Rome | Marcella | She was the only sister of Saint Ambrose of Milan who received the veil of consecrated virginity to live a life of perpetual virginity and to devote herself to the practice of prayer and asceticism. |
| Margaret | 1242 | Hungary | Hildegarde of Bingen | A royal princess who took solemn vows at the age of eighteen and thereafter lived in a convent a life of extreme austerity and penance that included ceaseless body mortification. |
| Margaret | circa 1045 | England / Scotland | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Born in exile in Hungary, she was an Anglo-Saxon princess who fled to the Kingdom of Scotland following the Norman conquest of England of 1066. Around 1070 she married Malcolm III of Scotland and became Queen. She was considered an exemplar of the just ruler and had an important influence on Scottish culture introducing continental customs and fashion to the Scottish court and embarking on a reform program in the Scottish church. |
| Paula | 347 | Rome | Marcella | Early Christian who was a noble Roman convert who followed St Jerome. |
| Walpurgis | circa 710 | England | Trotula | Became a missionary and worked with her brothers, Wynnebald and Willibald, in Germany until she settled in a convent at Heidenheim. Walpurgis Night, a spring celebration held in parts of Germany, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, and the Czech Republic, celebtates her. |
| Salomée Halpir | 1718 | Poland | Elizabeth Blackwell | A successful medical doctor who specialized as an oculist. The first female doctor from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Her memoirs, written in 1760, are a unique example of a travel memoir and women's literature. |
| Salpe | Flourished before the 3rd century BC | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | A midwife, physician and medical writer who favored the use of bodily fluids as curatives. Described in texts by Pliny the Elder. |
| Sarah Bernhardt | 1844/45 | France | Georgia O'Keeffe | Widely considered the most significant French actress of the nineteenth century. She developed a reputation as a serious dramatic actress, earning the nickname "The Divine Sarah." |
| Sarah Grimké | 1792 | United States | Sojourner Truth | American abolitionist, writer, and suffragist. Authored the first women's rights tract in the U.S., Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women (1838). |
| Sarah Jennings | 1660 | England | Elizabeth R. | She rose to be one of the most influential women of her time through her close friendship and counsel with Queen Anne of Great Britain. |
| Sarah of St. Gilles | Flourished circa 1326 | France | Trotula | A medieval medical practitioner. Her practice and medical knowledge is known through a contract with her student. This document is the earliest and best known example of this type of teacher-student contract. |
| Sarah Peale | 1800 | America | Anne Hutchinson | A successful portrait painter mainly of American politicians and military figures, and the occasional still life. Lafayette sat for her four times. |
| Sarah Siddons | 1755 | Wales | Artemisia Gentileschi | An actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character, Lady Macbeth, a character she made her own. |
| Sara Winnemucca | 1844 | Shoshonean tribe | Sacajawea | An advocate for Native Americans who founded the Peabody School for Native American children near Lovelock, Nevada, where children were taught in their own language but also learned English. The curriculum included the study of Native American history and culture. |
| Sarah | Reputedly flourished circa 1800 BC | Middle east | Judith | The wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. |
| Scholastica | c. 480 | Italy | Saint Bridget | She was the twin sister of the founder of the Benedictine Order, Saint Benedict. She was a nun and the leader of an early monastery for women, perhaps the first. |
| Selina Hastings | 1707 | England | Anne Hutchinson | The aristocratic Countess of Huntingdon, she was a pivotal figure in England's evangelical revival of the eighteenth century. She converted to Methodism and then founded her own sect of Calvinistic Methodists financed by her wealth. |
| Selma Lagerlöf | 1858 | Sweden | Virginia Woolf | In 1909 she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She is most widely known for her children's book Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils). |
| Semiramis | 9th century BC | Assyria | Hatshepsut | Legendary Queen of King Ninus. One of only two women to lead Babylon, she is credited with vast building works across the region. |
| Shibtu | c. 1700 BC | Syria | Ishtar | Queen of Mari. Many tablets of correspondence between Shibtu and her husband, King Zimri-Lim survive and show that she often managed the affairs of the kingdom. |
| Shub-Ad of Ur | c. 2500 BC | Sumer | Ishtar | Queen or priestess of 1st Dynasty of Ur. Her un-looted tomb was excavated between 1922 and 1934 and found to contain a rich collection of grave goods. |
| Sigrid Undset | 1882 | Norway | Virginia Woolf | A novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Her texts often explore women's identity as a struggle between a true self and prescribed sexual and social roles. |
| Simone de Beauvoir | 1908 | France | Virginia Woolf | A writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. She wrote The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. |
| Simone Weil | 1909 | France | Virginia Woolf | A philosopher, educator, revolutionary, advocate for human rights, and mystic. |
| Sobeya | Flourished late 10th century | Spain | Eleanor of Aquitaine | A sultana who ruled the Caliph of Córdoba in Islamic Spain as a regent for her son Hisham II al-Hakam. |
| Sofia Kovalevskaya | 1850 | Russia | Elizabeth Blackwell | The first major Russian female mathematician, responsible for important original contributions to analysis, differential equations and mechanics, and the first woman appointed to a full professorship in Northern Europe. |
| Sonia Delaunay | 1885 | France / Ukraine | Georgia O'Keeffe | A painter, print-maker, and textile designer. Co-founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. |
| Sonja Henie | 1912 | Norway | Elizabeth Blackwell | Winner of ten consecutive world figure skating championships and three Olympic gold medals in 1928, 1932, and 1936. She had a further career as a Hollywood star. |
| Sophia Haydn | 1868 | United States / Chile | Georgia O'Keeffe | The first woman accepted to the architecture program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a pioneer for women in the profession of architect. |
| Sophia Heath | 1896 | Ireland | Elizabeth Blackwell | A pioneer Irish aviator and proponent of women's events in the Olympic Games. |
| Sophia Perovskaya | 1853 | Russia | Margaret Sanger | A Russian revolutionary and a member of Narodnaya Volya. She helped to orchestrate the successful assassination of Alexander II of Russia for which she was executed. |
| Baroness of Adlersparre | 1823 | Sweden | Susan B. Anthony | Women's rights activist, publisher, editor, writer, debater, and co-founder of Sweden's first wave of feminism. |
| Sophie Blanchard | 1778 | France | Elizabeth Blackwell | The first female aeronaut and balloonist. Between 1805 and 1819 she conducted 59 balloon flights over Paris. |
| Sophie de Condorcet | 1764 | France | Natalie Barney | Was a prominent salon hostess from 1789 until the Reign of Terror, and again from 1799 until her death in 1822. Her salons were frequented by British and French intelligentsia. |
| Sophie Drinker | 1888 | United States | Ethel Smyth | An amateur musician and musicologist. She is considered a founder of women's musicological and gender studies. |
| Sophie Germain | 1776 | France | Caroline Herschel | Mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. Despite opposition from her parents and difficulties presented by society, she gained education from books in her father's library and from correspondence with famous mathematicians. |
| Sophia of Mecklenburg | 1557 | Germany | Elizabeth R. | A German noble and Queen of Denmark and Norway. Her interest in science manifested in her patronage of the astronomer Tycho Brahe. |
| Sophie Taeuber-Arp | 1889 | Switzerland | Georgia O'Keeffe | Artist, painter, sculptor, and dancer, considered one of the most important artists of geometric abstraction of the 20th century. |
| Sophonisba Angussola | c. 1532 | Italy | Artemisia Gentileschi | An Italian Renaissance painter whose skill was recognized by Michelangelo and who made a career as a court painter. |
| Sor Juana de la Cruz | 1648 | Mexico | Sacajawea | A talented Mexican nun, self-taught scholar-writer, and poet of the Baroque school who amassed a major library. When she was criticised by the Church she published a defense of women's right to knowledge, the Respuesta a sor Filotea de la Cruz. |
| Stephanie de Genlis | 1746 | France | Natalie Barney | A writer, harpist and educator whose work included the well-received novel Adèle et Théodore; ou, Lettres sur l'éducation of 1782. |
| Stephanie de Montaneis | Flourished mid-13th century | France | Trotula | A physician in Lyons at a time when it difficult for any women to enter the medical field. It is believed she was trained by her father Étienne de Montaneis. |
| Sulpicia | Flourished circa 90 | Italy | Hypatia | There are two Roman poets named Sulpicia. The one on the heritage floor refers to Sulpicia II, a poet whose best known works are a group of poems describing in explicit detail her relationship with her husband, and a second poem, in the form of a dialogue between Sulpicia and Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, which protests the banishing of philosophers from Rome in 94. |
| Susan la Flesche Piccotte | 1865 | United States | Elizabeth Blackwell | The first American Indian woman to become a physician in the United States. She was of mixed Omaha, Ponca, Iowa, French and Anglo-American descent, she grew up with her parents on the Omaha Reservation. |
| Susanna Lorantffy | 1602 | Hungary | Anna van Schurman | Assisted her husband, a Prince of Transylvania, in his successful struggle to introduce Protestant reforms in the Transylvanian church. Under her influence, John Amos Comenius, a prominent Calvinist teacher, took up residence in Sárospatak. |
| Susanna Rowson | 1762 | British-American | Emily Dickinson | Author of the 1791 novel Charlotte Temple, the most popular best-seller in American literature up to 1852. |
| Susanna Wesley | 1669 | England | Anne Hutchinson | Known as the Mother of Methodism because of her influence on her two sons, John Wesley and Charles Wesley who founded it. |
| Susanne Langer | 1895 | United States | Virginia Woolf | American philosopher of mind and of art. She was one of the first women to achieve an academic career in philosophy and the first to be popularly and professionally recognized as an American philosopher. |
| Suzanne Necker | 1737 | Switzerland | Mary Wollstonecraft | A salonist and writer. She hosted one of the most celebrated salons of the Ancien Régime. |
| Suzanne Valadon | 1865 | France | Georgia O'Keeffe | A French artist who became the first woman painter admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. |
| Sylvia Ashton-Warner | 1908 | New Zealand | Margaret Sanger | Writer, novelist, educator, theorist, painter, and memoirist. |
| Sylvia | Mid fourth century | Aquitaine, France | Saint Bridget | Saint Sylvia of Aquitaine, an abbess, is known for her journal describing her travels to holy sites in the Near East between 385 and 388AD. It is considered to be one of the earliest travel books ever written. However, the journal is now attributed to a Hispano-Roman woman named Egeria. |
| Sylvia Pankhurst | 1882 | England | Susan B. Anthony | A campaigner for the suffragist and working class movements in the United Kingdom. |
| Tanaquil | c. 570 BC | Etruria | Hatshepsut | Roman queen, prophet, artist and politician. |
| Tanith | Mythical | Carthage | Ishtar | Goddess of heaven and the moon. |
| Tarquinia Molza | 1542 | Italy | Isabella d'Este | A celebrated Italian singer, poet, and natural philosopher. |
| Tefnut | Mythical | Egypt | Primordial Goddess | Goddess of dew and rain. Tefnut is often depicted as a cat, a symbol of war, relating to a myth in which she fought with Shu and fled Egypt. |
| Telesilla | fl. 510 BC | Argos, Ancient Greece | Aspasia | A poet who led the women and slaves of Argos to defend the city against the Spartans who had killed all its men. |
| Tellus Mater | Mythical | Rome | Fertile Goddess | Roman goddess of fecundity. Her festival, held annually on April 15, was called the Fordicia and required the sacrifice of pregnant cows. |
| Teresa de Cartagena | 1425 | Spain | Christine de Pisan | A nun who authored The Admiraçión operum Dey (Wonder at the Works of God) considered as the first feminist tract written by a Spanish woman. |
| Teresa Villarreal | 1883 | Mexico and Texas | Sacajawea | Revolutionary labor and feminist organizer, who supported the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) during the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1917 |
| Tetisheri | c. 1650 BC | Egypt | Hatshepsut | Mother of the New Kingdom. Phe was the designated Great Wife of Pharaoh Tao I Seqenenre and enjoyed many powers and privileges that other queens before her had not held. Born into a common family, she rose quickly to power through her marriage. |
| Thalestris | c. 325 BC | Asia Minor | Amazon | Amazon queen. She brought 300 Amazon women to Alexander the Great, hoping to breed a race of children as strong and intelligent as he. |
| The Furies | Mythical | Greece | Kali | The Roman goddesses of vengeance who killed Clytemnestra, among other tales. Seen as cruel, but fair in their punishments. |
| The Norns | Mythical | Norway | Kali | The Norse goddesses of fate: three sisters named Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld. |
| Theano | Flourished circa 550 BC | Ancient Greece | Aspasia | The pupil, and daughter or wife of Pythagoras. She directed Pythagoras's school after his death and is credited with writing the treatise on the Golden Mean. |
| Thecla | 2nd century | Turkey | Saint Bridget | A saint of the early Christian Church, and a reported follower of Paul the Apostle. |
| Theoclea | flourished 6th century BC | Delphi in Ancient Greece | Aspasia | A Greek priestess, she was a tutor of the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras. |
| Theodelinda | c. 570 | Lombardy | Theodora | Queen of the Lombards; she played a major role in establishing Nicene Christianity in Lombardy and Tuscany. |
| Theodora III | 980 | Byzantine Empire | Theodora | A Byzantine Empress who was the last of the Macedonian dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire for almost two hundred years, she was co-empress with her sister Zoe and then sole empress. |
| Theodora the Senatrix | c. 870 | Rome | Trotula | Theodora was a powerful Roman senatrix (female senator) during a period labeled the Pornocracy, or Rule of the Harlots (circa 904–963), by some later Roman Catholic scholars. |
| Theodora II | c. 815 | Byzantine empire | Theodora | Byzantine empress during the reign of Theophilus (ruled 829–842). She was canonized after her death for reversing the policy of Iconoclasm (prohibition on the worship of icons). |
| Theresa of Avila | 1515 | Ávila, Spain | Hildegarde of Bingen | A mystic and a major figure in the Catholic Church, she is credited as a leader of the Counter Reformation and with reviving religious spirit in Spain. |
| Theroigne de Mericourt | 1762 | France | Mary Wollstonecraft | A French woman who was a predominant figure in the French Revolution. An eloquent speaker, she delivered fiery orations in clubs, before the National Assembly, and in the streets. |
| Thoma | Unknown; died 1127 | Spain | Hrosvitha | Legal scholar and author of books on grammar. |
| Tiamat | Mythical | Babylonia | Primordial Goddess | The Chaos goddess in Babylonian mythology, Tiamat is a chaos monster, a primordial goddess of the salt water ocean, who mated with Abzû, the god of fresh water, to produce the first generation of deities. |
| Timarete | 5th century BC | Ancient Greece | Sappho | An ancient Greek painter, the daughter of the painter Micon the Younger of Athens. According to Pliny the Elder, she "scorned the duties of women and practised her father's art." She is best known for a panel painting of the goddess of Diana that was kept at Ephesus. |
| Tituba | circa 1650 | Massachusetts | Petronilla de Meath | Tituba was a 17th-century Carib Indian slave from Barbados or Guiana, belonging to Samuel Parris of Salem, Massachusetts. Tituba was one of the first three people accused of practicing witchcraft during the Salem witch trials which took place in 1692. Tituba confessed and implicated other women in the colony in order to save herself from execution. She was later sold by Parris and relocated outside of Salem. |
| Tiy | c. 1398 BC | Egypt | Hatshepsut | Queen of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III. Her mummy was identified as The Elder Lady found in the Tomb of Amenhotep II. Amenhotep III seems to have relied on Tiy's political advice, being more interested in sports and the outdoors than in his pharaonic duties. |
| Tomyris | circa 530 BC | Central Asia | Boadaceia | A queen who reigned over the Massagetae, an Iranian people of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea. She defeated the Persian king Cyrus II in war. |
| Tuchulcha | Mythical | Etruria | Kali | A half human, half donkey, daemon of the Etruscan underworld. She had a vulture's beak, wings, and hair made of serpents. |
| Tullia d'Aragona | c. 1510 | Renaissance Italy | Isabella d'Este | An upper-class courtesan, author and philosopher, she published a Neoplatonic essay on the nature of love in which she insists on women's autonomy in romantic relationships. |
| Urraca | 1187 | Portugal | Trotula | Princess of Castile who married Afonso II of Portugal. She stood by Afonso during his ongoing civil war, as well as other conflicts, and guaranteed him the support of the Castilian royal family. |
| Ursley Kempe | c. 1525 | England | Petronilla de Meath | An English woman accused of causing the death of three people and hanged for witchcraft. |
| Valada | 1001 | Córdoba, Spain | Hrosvitha | A poet during Córdoba's golden age under Islamic rule, she hosted a vibrant literary salon. Her father's death when she was at the age of thirty gave her a rich legacy which allowed her to live independently and flout many of the conventions imposed on women of her time. She composed satirical, often caustic verse, much of it dedicated to her lover, the poet Ibn Zaydún. |
| The Valkyries | Mythical | Germany | Kali | Minor female deities, dressed as warriors, who conducted the souls of the most heroic German warriors after their deaths, to join Odin's army. |
| Vashti | Biblical, flourished c. 450 BC | Persia | Judith | Vashti is mentioned in the Old Testament Book of Esther as the wife of King Ahasuerus of Persia. The king boasted to other men that his wife was the most beautiful and he ordered her to appear naked before them. Vashti refused and was consequently banished from his household and possibly beheaded. The king took Esther as his wife in her place. |
| Veleda | Flourished circa 50 | North Germany | Boadaceia | A celebrated virgin prophet of the Bructeri, a tribe from northern Germany. In 69/70, she correctly prophesied the initial successes of the Batavian Rebellion against Roman rule. |
| Vera Figner | 1852 | Russia | Margaret Sanger | Russian revolutionary and narodnik born in Kazan. She was leader of Narodnaya Volya (the People's Will), a revolutionary socialist organization which aimed to depose the state regime through terrorism and was involved in the planning of several terrorist acts, including the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. |
| Vera Zasulich | 1849 | Russia | Margaret Sanger | Russian Marxist writer and revolutionary. In 1883, she helped found the Liberation of Labor, the first Russian Marxist group. Later, she served on the editorial board of Iskra, a revolutionary Marxist newspaper. After the Russian Social Democratic Party split in 1903, Zasulich became a leader of the Menshevik faction. |
| Veronica Gambara | 1485 | Italy | Isabella d'Este | Italian poet, stateswoman and political leader. Married to the lord of Correggio, after his death in 1518 she took charge of the state as well as the education of her two children. |
| Vesta | Mythical | Rome circa 753 BC – AD 476 | Sophia | The virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. |
| Victoria Woodhull | 1838 | United States | Susan B. Anthony | American leader of the woman's suffrage movement. She was a radical who advocated the eight-hour day, a progressive income tax, profit sharing, and social welfare programs. In 1872, she ran for president of the United States. |
| Vida Goldstein | 1869 | Australia | Susan B. Anthony | A pioneering Australian feminist politician who campaigned for women's suffrage and social reform. She stood for parliament five times, was a vocal opponent of capitalism and the White Australia policy, and a staunch pacifist, campaigning for peace during World War I. |
| Violante | c. 1365 | France | Eleanor of Aquitaine | French noblewoman who married John I of Aragon and became queen of the medieval Iberian kingdom of Aragon. John's ill-health, meant she wielded considerable power on his behalf. She transformed the Aragonese court into a center of culture, especially cultivating Provençal troubadours. |
| Virgin Mary | Biblical, New Testament | Galilee | Eleanor of Aquitaine | Identified in the New Testament and in the Quran as the mother of Jesus who conceived through divine intervention. Revered for centuries as the feminine aspect of the divine. |
| Virginia | c. 465 BC | Rome | Sophia | Commonly known as Verginia, her honor killing by her father inspired political revolt in Rome which overthrew the decemviri ruling council and restored the republic. |
| Vita Sackville-West | 1892 | England | Virginia Woolf | Author, poet and gardener whose successful 50-year bisexual open marriage scandalised society. |
| Vittoria Colonna | 1490 | Italy | Isabella d'Este | Italian noblewoman and poet, considered the most influential woman of the Italian Renaissance and friend and muse to Michelangelo. |
| Wanda Landowska | 1879 | Polish, later naturalized French | Ethyl Smyth | Musical prodigy whose harpsichordist performances, teaching, recordings and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century. |
| Wetamoo | c. 1635 | Wampanoag people, Rhode Island | Sacajawea | Native American noblewoman whose life was recorded in the children's historical novel series, The Royal Diaries |
| Willa Cather | 1873 | United States | Virginia Woolf | American author who is famous for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains. |
| Witch of Endor | c. 1000 BC | Kingdom of Israel | Judith | A woman seer who called up the ghost of the recently deceased prophet Samuel, at the demand of King Saul. |
| Xochitl | c. 11th century | Mesoamerica | Sacajawea | Toltec Queen from 990 to 1040. She helped forge the Toltec state and legend says she died in battle. |
| Yekaterina Breshkovskaya | 1844 | Russia | Margaret Sanger | Russian socialist revolutionary nicknamed The "Babushka" (Little Grandmother) of the Russian Revolution. |
| Yekaterina Dashkova | 1743 | Russia | Mary Wollstonecraft | The closest female friend of Empress Catherine the Great and a major figure of the Russian Enlightenment. One of the best educated women of her time. |
| Yolanda of Aragon | 1384 | France | Isabella d'Este | Chicago's description fits Yolande of Aragon, an important figure in French history who supported Joan of Arc's army financially. |
| Yvette | 1158 | Belgium | Hildegarde of Bingen | A religious figure and prophet in the town of Huy, Belgium |
| Zenobia | 240 | Palmyrene Empire | Boadaceia | Queen of the breakaway Palmyrene Empire in Roman Syria. She led a revolt against Rome expanding her empire, by conquering Egypt and expelling the Roman prefect. She ruled over Egypt until 274, when she was defeated and taken as a hostage to Rome by the Emperor Aurelian. |
| Zipporah | c. 1500 BC | Hebrew | Judith | Zipporah or Tzipora is described in the Book of Exodus as the wife of Moses. She came to Moses' aid by speedily circumcising their son at a critical juncture. |
| Siva | Mythical | Russia | Primordial Goddess | Slavic goddess of life, love, and fertility. She was worshipped in Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Germany under the names Siwa, Sieba, Razivia, Zhiva. |
| Zoe | c. 978 | Constantinople | Theodora | Reigned as co-empress of the Byzantine Empire with her sister Theodora from April 19 to June 11, 1042. |
| Zora Neale Hurston | 1891 | United States | Sojourner Truth | Harlem Renaissance writer both celebrated and castigated for her flamboyant wit and iconoclastic style, She was thirty-five years old before making a start in her literary career. |