15 Most Famous American Women

15 Most Famous American Women

*Originally published by Cyndi K on June 2022 and Updated by Vanessa on May 2023

1. Rosa Parks (1913- 2005)

Rosa Parks- Author; John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com- Wikimedia

Rosa Parks was an iconic figure in the field of the civil rights movement. She is best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott.

The United States Congress has honored her as “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement”. 

Her refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1st 1955, sparked the modern civil rights movement. 

Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws.

Parks’ act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became an important symbol of the movement.

She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation, and even organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, like Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. 

2. Rachel Carson (1907- 1964)

Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring. Official photo as FWS employee. c. 1940

Carson became famous and a critical figure due to her passion in environmental conservation. She’s mostly remembered for her fight and critical examination of chemical pesticide.

Rachel Carson was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist whose influential book Silent Spring (1962) and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

She began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s.

One of her many books called The Sea Around Us gained high praise and even won the U.S. National Book Award. She was further recognition as a gifted writer and financial security. 

3. Georgia O’Keeffe (1887- 1986)

Georgia O’Keeffe- Artist;
Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) – Wikimedia

Georgia O’Keeffe was a painter widely and highly regarded as one of the greatest modernist painter of the 20th century. She was a major figure in the American art for more than 70 years.

She was known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O’Keeffe has over the years been known as the “Mother of American modernism”.

In 1905, O’Keeffe began art training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then the Art Students League of New York.

In 1908, unable to fund further education, she worked for two years as a commercial illustrator and then taught in Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina between 1911 and 1918.

She studied art in the summers between 1912 and 1914 and was introduced to the principles and philosophies of Arthur Wesley Dow, who was the creator of works of art based upon personal style, design, and interpretation of subjects, rather than trying to copy or represent them.

This caused a major change in the way she felt about and approached art, as seen in the beginning stages of her watercolors from her studies at the University of Virginia and more dramatically in the charcoal drawings that she produced in 1915 that led to total abstraction. 

4. Marilyn Monroe (1926- 1962)

Marilyn Monroe- Author; Studio publicity still- Wikimedia

Born as Norma Jeane Mortenson, but popularly known as Marilyn Monroe, was an American actress, singer, and model.

Famous for playing comedic “blonde bombshell” characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s and was emblematic of the era’s sexual revolution.

Monroe was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962.

Even long after her death, Monroe remains to be a major icon of pop culture. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her sixth on their list of the greatest female screen legends from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

5. Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama- Author; Michelle Obama- Wikimedia

Born on January 17th, 1964 as Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, Mitchell Obama is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017.

She became the first African-American woman to serve in that position. She is the wife of former President Barack Obama.

Mitchell was raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, and is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School.

In her early legal career, she worked at the law firm Sidley Austin where she met Barack Obama. She subsequently worked in nonprofits and also as the associate dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago .

In addition, she served also as the vice president for Community and External Affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center.

 As the first lady, Obama served as a role model for women and worked as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating. She supported American designers and was considered a fashion icon.

Even after her husband’s presidency, Mitchell Obama’s influence has remained high. In 2020, she topped the Gallup’s poll of the most admired woman in America for the third year running.

6. Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey Picture By MILWAUKEE – Wikimedia Commons

Born in January 29, 1954 as Oprah Gail Winfrey, Oprah is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist.

She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which broadcasts from Chicago. The show  was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and ran in national syndication for 25 years straight, from 1986 to 2011.

Dubbed the “Queen of All Media”, Oprah was the richest African-American of the 20th century, was once the world’s only black billionaire, and the greatest black philanthropist in U.S. history. By 2007, she was sometimes ranked as the most influential woman in the world.

By 19, she was a co-anchor for the local evening news. Winfrey’s often emotional, extemporaneous delivery eventually led to her transfer to the daytime talk show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company.

7. Beyoncé Knowles

Beyonce Knowles by Jonathas Davi from Wikimedia Commons

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter was born on September 4, 1981. She is an American singer, songwriter, and actress.

Beyoncé performed in various singing and dancing competitions as a child. She rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of Destin’s Child, which was ranked as one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. 

Having sold 120 million records worldwide, Beyoncé is one of the world’s best-selling recording artists.

 She is the first solo artist to have their first six studio albums debut at number one on the Billboard 200.

Her success during the 2000s was recognized with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)’s Top Certified Artist of the Decade as well as Billboard‘s Top Female Artist of the Decade.

Beyoncé’s awards  and nominations include 28 Grammy Awards, 26 MTV Video Music Awards (including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award in 2014), 24 NAACP Image Awards, 31 BET Awards, and 17 Soul Train Music Awards; all of which are more than any other singer.

In 2014, Billboard named her the highest-earning black musician of all time, while in 2020, she was included on Time‘s list of 100 women who defined the last century.

8. Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston- Author; Angela George- Wikimedia

Born as Jennifer Joanna Aniston on February 11, 1969, Jenniffer Aniston is an American actress and producer.

She began working as an actress at an early age with an uncredited role in the 1988 film Mac and Me.

Her first major film role came in the 1993 horror comedy known as ‘Leprechaun.’ Since her career progressed in the 1990s, she has become one of the world’s highest-paid actresses.

Films that have her in the leading role have grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide, with 12 of them earning at least $100 million.

Aniston rose to international fame for her role as Rachel Green on the television sitcom Friends (1994–2004), for which she earned Primetime Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards.

Aniston has been included in numerous magazines’ lists of the world’s most beautiful women.

Her net worth is estimated as $300 million. She is the recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is the co-founder of the production company Echo Films, established in 2008.

9. Betty White (1922- 2021)

Betty White- Author; Angela George- Wikimedia

Betty Marion White was born in January 17, 1922 and passed away December 31, 2021. She  was an American actress and comedian.

As a pioneer of early television, with a television career spanning for more than seven decades, Betty White was noted for her vast work in the entertainment industry and being one of the first women to work both in front of and behind the camera.

She was the first woman to produce a sitcom (Life with Elizabeth) in the United States, which contributed to her being named honorary Mayor of Hollywood in 1955.

She is often referred to as the “First Lady of Television”, a title used for a 2018 documentary detailing her life and career.

In 2014, White earned a Guinness World Record for “Longest TV career by an entertainer (female)” and in 2018 for her lengthy work in radio, television, and film.

Over the span of her career, White received eight Emmy Awards in various categories, like three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award.

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was a Television Hall of Fame inductee in 1995

10. Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts- Author; len Nivrae- Wikimedia

Born as Julia Fiona Roberts on October 28, 1967, Julia Roberts is an American actress. She is known for her leading roles in films of several genres, that ranges from romantic comedies and dramas to thrillers and action films.

Many of her films have earned over $100 million at the worldwide box office, and six of them have ranked among the highest-grossing films of their respective years. She is the recipient of various awards and nominations that include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and three Golden Globe Awards.

Throughout the majority of the 1990s and first half of the 2000s, Roberts was the world’s highest-paid actress . 

11. Susan B. Anthony 

Engraved by G.E. Perine & Co., NY, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Anthony was crucial to the movement for women’s suffrage. She and her coworkers submitted an amendment to Congress in 1878 that would grant women the right to vote. Sen. Aaron A. Sargent of California, a Republican, introduced the bill in 1920, and it eventually became the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

12. Ada Lovelace

The brilliance of Ada Lovelace was years ahead of her time. She is recognised as being the first computer programmer in history and is a celebrated English mathematician. She is credited with writing the first description of computer software in her notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Today, Ada Lovelace Day, which honours women in STEM, is observed on the second Tuesday of October.

13. Florence Nightingale

Known also as Lady with the Lamp, Florence Nightingale was a British nurse who is recognised as the founder of contemporary nursing. She gained her nickname during the Crimean War because she cared for the injured all night long and for hours at a time. She established the first science-based nursing school in London in 1860.

14. Nellie Bly

The investigative journalism norm was formed by Nellie Bly. Bly wrote on more serious subjects including mental health, poverty, and political corruption at a time when female authors were restricted to the society pages.

Her undercover work at the insane asylum on Blackwell’s (formerly Roosevelt) Island is what made her most well-known. She exposed the horrible circumstances and prompted much-needed reforms to patient care. Also, she broke the record for the globe’s circumference. She finished it in just 72 days.

15. Margaret Sanger

Los Angeles Times, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The phrase “birth control” was created by feminist and women’s rights advocate Sanger. Before her greatest accomplishment—getting Enovid, the first oral contraceptive, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960, six years before her death—she published pamphlets and established a women’s health clinic.

While Margaret is famous for her advocacy work, she is not short of controversy. She has been accused of being racist and using her advocacy for reproductive health, especially birth control, to control the population of black people in the United States and even advancing the Negr* project. 

For this reason, students from the University of Missouri successfully petitioned to have her posters removed from the institution. there have also been nationwide campaigns for the removal of her statues and symbols that represented her hatred and racism against minority communities. 

Further, Planned Parenthood has distanced itself from her (it is an organization that she founded).   In a statement released by Karen Seltzer, the chair of Planned Parenthood of New York, she said

“The removal of Margaret Sanger’s name from our building is both a necessary and overdue step to reckon with our legacy and acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s contributions to historical reproductive harm within communities of color. Margaret Sanger’s concerns and advocacy for reproductive health have been clearly documented, but so too has her racist legacy.”