Discover the Women of the Hall

These are the Inductees of the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Select any of the women to discover their stories and learn how they have influenced other women and this country.

Achievements Year Born Where Born Year Inducted Last Name
Year Born: to
Birth State or Country: or
Year Inducted: to
First Letter of Last Name: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Inductee Name Achievements Born Where Born Inducted More

Madam C. J. Walker Business 1867 Louisiana 1993

Madam C. J. Walker

Year Honored: 1993
Birth: 1867 - 1919
Born In: Louisiana
Achievements: Business

Sara Breedlove, a Black entrepreneur considered the first African American woman to become a millionaire. She did this by devising a hair care and grooming system for African Americans and pioneered a door-to-door sales approach. The daughter of former slaves, Walker became an advocate for positive social change as well as a philanthropist.


Muriel Siebert Business 1928 Ohio 1994

Muriel Siebert

Year Honored: 1994
Birth: 1928 - 2013
Born In: Ohio
Achievements: Business

First woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (1967). She was also the nation’s first-ever discount broker and the first woman to serve as Superintendent of Banks for the State of New York.


Oprah Winfrey Arts, Business, Philanthropy 1954 Mississippi 1994

Oprah Winfrey

Year Honored: 1994
Birth: 1954 -
Born In: Mississippi
Achievements: Arts, Business, Philanthropy

The first Black woman to own her own television production company and who became television’s highest-paid entertainer. She is an advocate for ending child abuse, and she contributes generously to colleges and universities.


Wilhelmina Cole Holladay Arts, Business, Philanthropy 1922 1996

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay

Year Honored: 1996
Birth: 1922 - 2021
Achievements: Arts, Business, Philanthropy

Founder of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., which brings national and international attention to the vast achievements of women in art.


Lydia Moss Bradley Business, Philanthropy 1816 Indiana 1998

Lydia Moss Bradley

Year Honored: 1998
Birth: 1816 - 1908
Born In: Indiana
Achievements: Business, Philanthropy

Educator, founder of Bradley University and coeducation advocate. Bradley was a pioneer in business and education, the first female member of a national bank board in the United States. Noted as a philanthropist who financially supported many social causes, she determined that Bradley University would be for both women and men.


Joan Ganz Cooney Arts, Business, Education 1929 Arizona 1998

Joan Ganz Cooney

Year Honored: 1998
Birth: 1929 -
Born In: Arizona
Achievements: Arts, Business, Education

Founder of the Children’s Television Workshop for Public Television and creator of Sesame Street. Cooney created a study for the Carnegie Corporation on the possible use of television for preschool education. Acting on her own findings, she solicited funds to develop a program for television. For this, she was the winner of the Emmy and Peabody Awards, along with other honors.


Felice N. Schwartz Business 1925 New York 1998

Felice N. Schwartz

Year Honored: 1998
Birth: 1925 - 1996
Born In: New York
Achievements: Business

Founder in 1962 of Catalyst, the premier organization working with corporations to foster women’s leadership. She published studies (Women in Corporate Leadership in 1990 and Women in Engineering in 1992) illustrating the barriers to women’s workplace progress and then provided samples of model corporate practices to help women advance. Her work has had a lasting impact on the composition of American corporate leadership.


Lucille Ball Arts, Business 1911 New York 2001

Lucille Ball

Year Honored: 2001
Birth: 1911 - 1989
Born In: New York
Achievements: Arts, Business

Undoubtedly one of the best known and best loved television comediennes of all time. The “I Love Lucy Show”, which began in 1951, is still shown in reruns in more than 70 countries around the world. She was a television pioneer who excelled both in the acting and the production aspects of television.


Barbara Holdridge Arts, Business 1929 New York 2001

Barbara Holdridge

Year Honored: 2001
Birth: 1929 -
Born In: New York
Achievements: Arts, Business

Barbara Holdridge is the co-founder of Caedmon Records, the first commercially successful project to record and distribute the works of living authors as well as recordings of past literary works by distinguished actors.


Harriet Williams Russell Strong Business 1844 New York 2001

Harriet Williams Russell Strong

Year Honored: 2001
Birth: 1844 - 1926
Born In: New York
Achievements: Business

An inventor of water-conservation techniques, she was also a very successful businesswoman. Her water irrigation systems are credited with being one of the factors in the development of southern California as a major agricultural region.


Katharine Graham Arts, Business 1917 New York 2002

Katharine Graham

Year Honored: 2002
Birth: 1917 - 2001
Born In: New York
Achievements: Arts, Business

As publisher and then Board Chair and CEO of the Washington Post, Graham became one of the most influential women in the country. Her courageous decisions to publish the Pentagon Papers and to proceed with the Watergate investigation earned her a reputation as a daring and thorough journalist, willing to take risks in order to give the American people full access to important information.


Linda G. Alvarado Business 1951 New Mexico 2003

Linda G. Alvarado

Year Honored: 2003
Birth: 1951 -
Born In: New Mexico
Achievements: Business

Hispanic-American businesswoman who started her own construction firm in 1976 and has broken many barriers in a historically male-dominated world. As co-owner of The Colorado Rockies baseball team, Alvarado is also the first Hispanic-American, male or female, to own a major league baseball franchise.


Martha Matilda Harper Business 1857 Canada 2003

Martha Matilda Harper

Year Honored: 2003
Birth: 1857 - 1950
Born In: Canada
Achievements: Business

After 25 years of low-wage service, Martha Matilda Harper started a beauty products system called the Harper Method, eventually realizing over 500 franchises world-wide in the 1920s. Harper is credited with creating the modern retail franchising method. She was also known as a social justice advocate ahead of her time, offering evening hours for working women, profit-sharing and personal time off. She refused to use permanents or hair dyes in her salons because of the associated chemicals.


Anna Jacobson Schwartz Business 1915 New York 2013

Anna Jacobson Schwartz

Year Honored: 2013
Birth: 1915 - 2012
Born In: New York
Achievements: Business

Perhaps the most widely acclaimed female research economist of the twentieth century, Anna Jacobson Schwartz has been described as “one of the world’s greatest monetary scholars.” In 1941, after a five year career with Columbia University’s Social Science Research Council, Schwartz began her more than seventy year tenure working for the National Bureau of Economic Research. During her time at the National Bureau, Schwartz met and began working with Milton Friedman and together, the two coauthored A Monetary History of the United States, 1867 – 1960. Described by Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, as “the leading and most persuasive explanation of the worst economic disaster in American history,” the text is one of the most widely cited in economics. Schwartz was also considered a leading financial historian and expert on monetary statistics in the United States and Britain.


Sherry Lansing Arts, Business, Humanities, Philanthropy 1944 Illinois 2017

Sherry Lansing

Year Honored: 2017
Birth: 1944 -
Born In: Illinois
Achievements: Arts, Business, Humanities, Philanthropy

A trailblazer, visionary leader and creative filmmaker. She was involved in the production, marketing and distribution of more than 200 films and the first woman to head a major film studio.


Alice Waters Business, Education, Humanities, Philanthropy 1944 New Jersey 2017

Alice Waters

Year Honored: 2017
Birth: 1944 -
Born In: New Jersey
Achievements: Business, Education, Humanities, Philanthropy

A chef, author and food activist, and the founder and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California. She has been a champion of local sustainable agriculture for over four decades, and is credited with popularizing the organic food movement.


Victoria Jackson Business, Philanthropy 1955 New York 2017

Victoria Jackson

Year Honored: 2017
Birth: 1955 -
Born In: New York
Achievements: Business, Philanthropy

A cosmetic entrepreneur who created, funded, and led a research foundation that has shaped a paradigm-breaking approach to medical research. The Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation has created a global community of patients, advocates, and healthcare stakeholders, with significant positive impact on the treatment of autoimmune and related diseases.


Gloria Allred Business, Government 1941 2019

Gloria Allred

Year Honored: 2019
Birth: 1941 -
Achievements: Business, Government

Gloria Allred is a founding partner of the law firm of Allred, Maroko & Goldberg (AM&G). Across her 42-year legal career, her firm has handled more women’s rights cases than any other private law firm in the nation and has won hundreds of millions of dollars for victims. Her work began with sex discrimination cases eliminating separation of toys by gender in stores and the exclusion of women from private clubs, and in recent decades has focused on sexual harassment and assault as well as reproductive justice. A key voice in the pursuit of marriage equality, Allred has won countless honors for her pioneering legal work on behalf of women’s rights and rights for minorities. Her work continues today.


Diane von Furstenberg Arts, Business 1946 2019

Diane von Furstenberg

Year Honored: 2019
Birth: 1946 -
Achievements: Arts, Business

Diane von Furstenberg is a fashion designer, philanthropist, and Founder and Chairman of the company that bears her name. In 1974, she debuted her iconic wrap dress, which became a symbol of power and independence for women all over the world and grew into a global brand. She acted as President of the CFDA from 2006 to 2015, and served as its Chairwoman from 2015 to 2019. In 2010, she established the DVF Awards to honor extraordinary women.  Her memoir, The Woman I Wanted To Be, was published in 2014 and has been translated into six languages. In 2015, she was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People. In 2018, she received the CFDA Swarovski Award for Positive Change. She currently serves on the boards of CFDA, Vital Voices, the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation, The Shed, and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.


Indra Nooyi Business 1955 India 2021

Indra Nooyi

Year Honored: 2021
Birth: 1955 -
Born In: India
Achievements: Business

Elouise Cobell Business 1945 Montana 2024

Elouise Cobell

Year Honored: 2024
Birth: 1945 - 2011
Born In: Montana
Achievements: Business

Known as “Yellow Bird Woman,” Elouise Cobell was an entrepreneur, banker, advocate, and member of the Blackfeet Nation who fought tirelessly for government accountability and for Native Americans to have control over their own financial future.


Serena Williams Athletics, Business 1981 Michigan 2024

Serena Williams

Year Honored: 2024
Birth: 1981 -
Born In: Michigan
Achievements: Athletics, Business

Serena Williams is a highly regarded tennis champion, entrepreneur, investor, fashion designer, and executive producer. Considered among the greatest tennis players of all time, she was ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) for 319 weeks, including a joint-record 186 consecutive weeks, and finished as the year-end No. 1 five times.