Wangari Maathai, an environmental activist and the first African to win a Nobel Peace Prize (1940-2011)
Catherine of Siena, the first woman of 4 to be declared a “doctor of the Church,” with a strong influence on the history of the papacy (1347-1380)
Isabella of Castile, the Spanish queen and political unifier (1451-1504)
Joan of Arc, a martyr and military leader (1412-1431)
Milla Jovovich as Joan of Arc in The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
Mary Anning, one of Britain’s leading experts on prehistoric life (1799-1847)
Elizabeth Fry or “Angel of Prisons,” an English prison reformer (1780-1845)
Cleopatra, the Egyptian pharaoh (69 BC-30 BC)
Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra (1963)
Vera Atkins, a British intelligence officer who trained British secret agents that parachuted into France to sabotage the Nazis in World War II (1908-2000)
Catherine the Great, the longest-ruling Empress of Russia (1729-1796)
Mary Shelley, the English novelist who wrote Frankenstein (1797-1851)
Fun fact: Mary Shelley’s mother is Mary Wollstonecraft, who placed 8th on this list.
Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic nun who helped the less fortunate (1910-1997)
Mary Seacole, a British-Jamaican business woman and nurse (1805-1881)
Josephine Butler, an advocate for women’s rights (1828-1906)
Queen Victoria, one of the UK’s most iconic monarchs (1819-1901)
Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (1897-1937)
Princess Diana, a British royal family member (1961-1997)
Boudicca, a queen who shook the Roman empire (30 AD-61 AD)
Jane Austen, the novelist who wrote Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice (1775-1817)
Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus (1st century BC-1st century AD)
Eleanor of Aquitaine, the medieval queen who took on Europe’s most powerful men (1122-1204)
Marie Stopes, an advocate of birth control (1880-1958)
Florence Nightingale or “The Lady with the Lamp,” the founder of modern nursing (1820-1910)
Mary Wollstonecraft, a feminist philosopher who championed education and liberation for women (1759-1797)
Angela Burdett-Coutts, an advocate of the poor (1814-1906)
Margaret Thatcher or “The Iron Lady,” the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1925-2013)
Rosalind Franklin, an English chemist known for photograph 51 that led to development of the DNA model (1920-1958)
Ada Lovelace, a mathematician who is considered to be the first computer programmer (1815-1852)
Emmeline Pankhurst, a British social reformer who fought for a woman’s right to vote (1858-1928)
Rosa Parks, civil rights activist who resisted bus segregation (1913-2005)
Marie Curie, a Polish-born French scientist who founded the new science of radioactivity (1867-1934)
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