Catherine the Great was the ruler of Russia after she had her husband deposed. She was responsible for the expansion of Russia into Central Europe and to the shores of the Black Sea.
Mary Shelley, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, eloped with the poet Percy Shelley, and later wrote the novel
Frankenstein as part of a bet with Shelley and his friend George, Lord Byron.
Jane Goodall observed and documented the life of chimps in the wild from 1970 into the 1990s, and has tirelessly worked for the better treatment of chimpanzees.
Coco Chanel was one of the 20th century's best-known fashion designers. Her look helped define the 1920s and the 1950s.
The diaries of Anaïs Nin, first published in the 1960s when she was more than 60 years old, frankly discuss her life, her many loves and lovers, and her self-discovery quest.
Isabel Allende, a journalist, fled her country, Chile, when her uncle, the president, was assassinated. After leaving her homeland, she turned to writing novels that look at life -- especially women's lives -- with both mythology and realism.
Even if Betsy Ross didn't make the first American flag (she may not have, despite the legend), her life and work shed light on the experience of women in colonial and revolutionary America.
Marie Antoinette, Queen Consort to Louis XVI of France, was unpopular with the French people, and ultimately was executed during the French Revolution.
Jackie Kennedy (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) first came to public attention as the fashionable and graceful wife of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. She served as First Lady from 1961 until her husband's assassination in 1963, and she later married Aristotle Onassis.
