Marie-Jeanne "Manon" Roland de la Platière, born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon, and best known under the name Madame Roland, was a French revolutionary, salonnière and writer.
Olympe de Gouges was a French playwright and political activist. She is best known for her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen and other writings on women's rights and abolitionism.
Maria Amalia Teresa of Naples and Sicily was Queen of the French by marriage to Louis Philippe I, King of the French. She was the last queen of France.
A salon is a gathering of people held by a host. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate". Salons in the tradition of the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries are still being carried on today.
Louise-Élisabeth de Croÿ de Tourzel was a French noblewoman and courtier, as the Marquise of Tourzel. She was the Governess of the Children of France from 1789 until 1792. Decades after the French Revolution, Louise-Élisabeth published her memoirs, which presented a unique perspective on the royal family during the French Revolution. She later acquired the title of duchess.
Marie-Thérèse Charlotte was the eldest child of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette of France, and their only child to reach adulthood. In 1799 she married her cousin Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, the eldest son of Charles, Count of Artois, henceforth becoming the Duchess of Angoulême. She was briefly Queen of France in 1830.
Louise of Savoy was a French noble and regent, Duchess suo jure of Auvergne and Bourbon, Duchess of Nemours and the mother of King Francis I and Marguerite of Navarre. She was politically active and served as the regent of France in 1515, in 1525–1526 and in 1529, during the absence of her son.
Anne-Josèphe Théroigne de Méricourt was a Belgian singer, orator and organizer in the French Revolution. She was born at Marcourt, in Prince-Bishopric of Liège, a small town in the modern Belgian province of Luxembourg. She was active in the French Revolution and worked within the Austrian Low Countries to also foster revolution. She was held in an Austrian prison from 1791 to 1792 for being an agent provocateur in Belgium. She was a cofounder of a Parisian revolutionary club and had warrants for her arrest issued in France for her alleged participation in the October Days uprising. She is known both for her portrayal in the French Revolutionary press and for her subsequent mental breakdown and institutionalization.
Olympia Mancini, Countess of Soissons was the second-eldest of the five celebrated Mancini sisters, who along with two of their female Martinozzi cousins, were known at the court of King Louis XIV of France as the Mazarinettes because their uncle was Louis XIV's chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Olympia was later to become the mother of the famous Austrian general Prince Eugene of Savoy. She also involved herself in various court intrigues including the notorious Affair of the Poisons, which led to her expulsion from France.
Marie Joséphine of Savoy was a princess of France and countess of Provence by marriage to the future King Louis XVIII of France. She was regarded by Bourbon Royalist Legitimists as the titular 'queen of France' when her husband assumed the title of king in 1795 upon the death of his nephew, the titular King Louis XVII of France, until her death. She was never practically queen, as she died before her husband actually became king in 1814.
The Brabant Revolution or Brabantine Revolution, sometimes referred to as the Belgian Revolution of 1789–1790 in older writing, was an armed insurrection that occurred in the Austrian Netherlands between October 1789 and December 1790. The revolution, which occurred at the same time as revolutions in France and Liège, led to the brief overthrow of Habsburg rule and the proclamation of a short-lived polity, the United Belgian States.
Jeanne Desirée Véret Gay was a French socialist feminist.
Louise-Félicité Guynement de Kéralio was a French writer and translator, originating from the minor Breton nobility.
Duchess Therese Mathilde Amalie of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a member of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and a Duchess of Mecklenburg. Through her marriage to Karl Alexander, 5th Prince of Thurn and Taxis, Therese was also a member of the House of Thurn and Taxis.
Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy, Princesse de Lamballe was a member of the Savoy-Carignano cadet branch of the House of Savoy. She was married at the age of 17 to Louis Alexandre de Bourbon-Penthièvre, Prince de Lamballe, the heir to the greatest fortune in France. After her marriage, which lasted a year, she went to the French royal court and became the confidante of Queen Marie Antoinette. She was killed in the massacres of September 1792 during the French Revolution.
Jeanne de Bellem or Jeanne Pinaut, was a politically active Belgian pamphlet writer and a participator of the Brabant revolution of 1789. She had a long-term relationship with the revolutionary leader Henri Van der Noot and exerted a great deal of political influence upon the rule within the United States of Belgium 1789–1790.
Paule Mink was a French feminist and socialist revolutionary of Polish descent. She participated in the Paris Commune and in the First International. Her pseudonym is also sometimes spelled Minck.
Historians since the late 20th century have debated how women shared in the French Revolution and what impact it had on French women. Women had no political rights in pre-Revolutionary France; they were considered "passive" citizens, forced to rely on men to determine what was best for them. That changed dramatically in theory as there seemingly were great advances in feminism. Feminism emerged in Paris as part of a broad demand for social and political reform. These women demanded equality to men and then moved on to a demand for the end of male domination. Their chief vehicle for agitation were pamphlets and women's clubs, especially the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women. However, the Jacobin element in power abolished all the women's clubs in October 1793 and arrested their leaders. The movement was crushed. Devance explains the decision in terms of the emphasis on masculinity in wartime, Marie Antoinette's bad reputation for feminine interference in state affairs, and traditional male supremacy. A decade later the Napoleonic Code confirmed and perpetuated women's second-class status.
Bonne Marie Félicité de Sérent née de Montmorency-Luxembourg, was a French courtier. She served as dame d'atour to Princess Élisabeth of France in 1776–92, and as dame d'honneur to Marie Thérèse of France in 1799–1823.
Marianne de Bellem was a Belgian revolutionary and pastellist.