21st-century American women

Adrienne Danielle Frantz (born June 7, 1978) is an American actress and singer-songwriter. She appeared as Amber Moore in The Bold and the Beautiful (1997–2005, 2010–2012) and The Young and the Restless (2006–2010, 2013).

Kristen Heather Gilbert (née Strickland; born November 13, 1967) is an American serial killer and former nurse who was convicted of four murders and two attempted murders of patients admitted to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in Northampton, Massachusetts. She induced cardiac arrest in patients by injecting their intravenous therapy bags with lethal doses of epinephrine, commonly known as adrenaline, which is an untraceable heart stimulant. She would then respond to the coded emergency, often resuscitating the patients herself. Prosecutors said Gilbert was on duty for about half of the 350 deaths that occurred at the hospital from when she started working there in 1989, and that the odds of this merely being a coincidence was 1 in 100 million. However, her only confirmed victims were Stanley Jagodowski, Henry Hudon, Kenneth Cutting, and Edward Skwira.

Mary Katherine "Mary Kay" Fualaau (née Schmitz, formerly Letourneau; January 30, 1962 – July 6, 2020), was an American sex offender and teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child. Letourneau was 34, and the child, Vili Fualaau, was 12 years old when she initiated the sexual abuse. He was her sixth-grade student at an elementary school in Burien, Washington. While awaiting sentencing, she gave birth to Fualaau's daughter. With the state seeking a seven and a half year prison sentence, she reached a plea agreement calling for six months in jail with three months suspended and no contact with Fualaau for life, among other terms. The case received national attention.
Shortly after Letourneau had completed three months in jail, the police caught her in a car with Fualaau. A judge revoked her plea agreement and reinstated the prison sentence for the maximum allowed by law of seven and a half years. Eight months after returning to prison, she gave birth to Fualaau's second child, another daughter. She was imprisoned from 1998 to 2004. Letourneau and Fualaau were married in May 2005, and the marriage lasted 14 years until their separation in 2019.

Denise Rich (born Eisenberg; January 26, 1944) is an American-born Austrian singer-songwriter, socialite, philanthropist and political fundraiser.

Mary Elizabeth Smith (February 2, 1923 – November 12, 2017) was an American gossip columnist. She was known as "The Grand Dame of Dish". Beginning her career in radio in the 1950s, for a time she also anonymously wrote the "Cholly Knickerbocker" gossip column for the Hearst newspapers. In the 1960s and early 1970s, she was the entertainment editor for the magazines Cosmopolitan and Sports Illustrated. Between 1976 and 2009, she wrote a self-titled gossip column for newspapers including New York Newsday, the New York Daily News and the New York Post that was syndicated in 60 to 70 other newspapers. On television, she appeared on Fox, E!, and WNBC.

Susanna Kaysen (born November 11, 1948) is an American author, best known for her 1993 memoir Girl, Interrupted.

Marcy Lynn Walker (born November 26, 1961), also known as Marcy Smith, is an American youth minister and former actress known for her television appearances on daytime soap operas. Her most famous roles are those of Liza Colby on All My Children, which she played from 1981 to 1984 and 1995 to 2005, and as Eden Capwell on Santa Barbara from 1984 to 1991.

Pamela Tiffin Wonso (October 13, 1942 – December 2, 2020) was an American film and television actress.

Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism.
Her best-selling book The Gnostic Gospels (1979) examines the divisions in the early Christian church, and the way that women have been viewed throughout Jewish history and Christian history. Modern Library named it as one of the 100 best books of the twentieth century.

Nancy Frangione (July 10, 1953 – August 18, 2023) was an American soap opera actress.