Historically, Brooklyn boasts two Olympic women athletes, one Nobel Prize-winning scientist, dozens of internationally known women singers, actresses and comedians and writers, and one Supreme Court Justice who received some of her education in Brooklyn.
We've elected five women politicians to the US House of Representatives in Congress, including the first-ever black woman.
For students, teachers, Women History Month activists, and most of all the young women of Brooklyn, here's a list of over 70 prominent, inspiring and path-breaking women who were either born in Brooklyn, raised or educated in Brooklyn, or who lived in the borough.
Famous, Accomplished Women Who Were Born or Lived in Brooklyn
- Lauren Bacall, actress and movie star
- Pat Benatar, folk and jazz singer (born in Greenpoint)
- Clara Bow, actress
- Jane Brody, NY Times health writer and author
- Jane Bowles, author and playwright
- Foxy Brown, born as Inga DeCarlo Fung Marchand, rap singer
- Julie Budd, singer
- Betty Carter, blues and jazz singer
- Shirley Chisholm, first black female member of US House of Representatives
- Kim Coles, singer
- Betty Comden, Composer
- Didi Conn, actor
- Elaine deKooning, abstract expressionist painter
- Sandra Feldman, President of American Federation of Teachers
- Cristina Fontanelli, opera soprano
- Ina Rosenberg Garten, TV Food Network's "Barefoot Contessa"
- Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Supreme Court Judge
- Ellie Greenwich, songwriter, singer, and musician
- Gypsy Rose Lee, burlesque performer
- Adelaide Hall, jazz singer
- Susan Hayward, Oscar-winning actress
- Rita Hayworth, actress and movie star
- Leona Helmsley, businessperson and real estate investor
- Celeste Holm, actress
- Eleanor Holm, Olympic swimmer and wife of impresario Billy Rose
- Elizabeth Holtzman, lawyer, member of US House of Representatives
- Lena Horne, jazz singer
- Anne Jackson, actor
- Lainie Kazan, actress
- Edna Kelly, elected to US House of Representatives 1949.
- Dorothy Kilgallen journalist and game show host of What's My Line?
- Carole King, singer
- Lee Krasner, painter and Jackson Pollock's wife
- Paule Marshall, author
- Barbara McClintock, winner of Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1983
- Carson McCullers, author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
- Anne Meara, comedienne and actress
- Alyssa Milano, actress
- Stephanie Mills, singer, actor
- Marianne Moore, poet
- Rhea Perlman, actress and author
- Beverly Pepper sculptor/artist
- Rosie Perez, actress
- Martha Raye, singer, comedienne and actress
- Joan Rivers, comedienne and actress
- Lucille Roberts, comedienne and actress
- Nomi Ruiz, hip hop singer
- Roseanna Scotto, FOX TV personality/anchor
- Judge Judy Sheindlin, judge, author, TV personality
- Beverly Sills, opera star
- Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- Barbara Stanwyck, actress
- Connie Stevens, singer
- Barbra Streisand, singer
- Norma Talmadge,silent film actress
- Marisa Tomei, actress
- Cheryl Toussaint, Olympic gold medalist, 1972
- Michelle Trachtenberg, actress
- Mary Tyler Moore, comedienne and actress
- Brenda Vaccaro, actress
- Nydia M. Velázquez, Member of the US House of Representatives
- Mae West, comedienne and actress
- Lillias White, singer and actress
- Shelley Winters, Oscar-nominated actress
- Wendy Wasserstein, playright
- Margaret Wise Brown, author of the children's classic, Goodnight Moon
- Matilda Tone, wife of a famous Irish patriot
- pioneering African-American doctor Susan McKinney Steward
- physician Mary Jacobi
- abolitionist Abigail Hopper Gibbons
- actresses Laura Keene and Kate Claxton
- Lola Montez, of notorious reputation as a mistress of powerful men, and
- abolitionist Elizabeth Tilton.
Permanent Brooklynites: Also, buried in Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn — and therefore permanent Brooklyn residents — lie more than a half-dozen prominent women who have been featured on past Green-Wood Cemetery Mothers Day Walking Tours. These women may or may not have begun their lives, or lived their lives, in Brooklyn, but here they rest in peace. They include, according to Green-Wood Cemetery:
