Notable : Book Collection : Profiles Of Women

Léonie La Fontaine (October 2, 1857–February 26, 1949) was a Belgian pioneering feminist and pacifist. Active in the international feminism struggle, she was a member of the Belgian League for the Rights of Women, the National Belgian Women Council and the Belgian’s Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Her brother was Henri La Fontaine, Belgian international lawyer and president of the International Peace Bureau who received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1913, and was also an early advocate for women's rights and suffrage, founding in 1890 the Belgian League for the Rights of Women.Very close to the Mundaneum project, initiated by Paul Otlet and her brother Henri La Fontaine and to the notion of documentation, she initiated the Office central de documentation féminine in 1909, and created in her own home a library for the Belgian League for the Rights of Women, to help women in their professional choices.
Léonie La Fontaine died on 26 January 1949, the year when the law allowing women to vote came into effect.

Zoé Charlotte de Gamond (11 February 1806 – 28 February 1854) was a Belgian educator and feminist who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Marie de G***.

Isala Van Diest (7 May 1842 – 9 February 1916) was the first female medical doctor and the first female university graduate in Belgium.

Commandant Caroline Aigle (French pronunciation: [kaʁɔlin ɛɡl] ) (12 September 1974 – 21 August 2007) was a French aviator who achieved a historical first when, at the age of 25, she became the first woman fighter pilot in the French Air Force. Her promising military career was cut short by death from cancer seven years later. She was posthumously awarded the Médaille de l'Aéronautique (Aeronautics Medal).

Berthe Weill (Paris 1865 – 1951): 11  was a French art dealer who played a vital role in the creation of the market for twentieth-century art with the manifestation of the Parisian Avant-Garde. Although she is much less known than her well-established competitors like Ambroise Vollard, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and Paul Rosenberg, she may be credited with producing the first sales in Paris for Pablo Picasso: 26  and Henri Matisse: 26  and with providing Amedeo Modigliani with the only solo exhibition in his lifetime (see poster advertising the exhibition).
The impressive list of artists who made their way through her gallery and into the canon of modern art continues with names such as Raoul Dufy, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Diego Rivera, Georges Braque, Kees van Dongen, Maurice Utrillo, Pablo Picasso and Jean Metzinger. Her role was also important in the early exposure and sales of women painters such as Suzanne Valadon, Emilie Charmy and Jacqueline Marval.In 1933, Weill published her memoirs, an account of thirty years as an art dealer, from which many historical renditions quote. Her gallery lasted until 1939, and notwithstanding the number of luminary artists that passed through her gallery, she remained poor and destitute her whole life and after her death was almost forgotten.
Recently, interest in Berthe Weill has become more significant. In 2007, Picasso's portrait of Berthe Weill (1920) was designated a French national treasure.: 11  In 2009, her memoirs (1933) were republished and a compilation of her gallery exhibitions; in 2011, the first study dedicated to her life and dealership was published by leading Weill scholar Marianne Le Morvan. In February 2012, the City of Paris decided to place a memorial plaque at 25 rue Victor Massé (Paris), where Berthe Weill opened her first gallery in 1900.

Marie Marvingt (20 February 1875 – 14 December 1963) was a French athlete, mountaineer, aviator, and journalist. She won numerous prizes for her sporting achievements including those of swimming, cycling, mountain climbing, winter sports, ballooning, flying, riding, gymnastics, athletics, rifle shooting, and fencing. She was the first woman to climb many of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps. She was a record-breaking balloonist, an aviator, and during World War I she became the first female combat pilot. She was also a qualified surgical nurse, was the first trained and certified flight nurse in the world, and worked for the establishment of air ambulance services throughout the world. In 1903 M. Château de Thierry de Beaumanoir named her the fiancée of danger, which newspapers used to describe her for the rest of her life. It is also included on the commemorative plaque on the façade of the house where she lived at 8 Place de la Carrière, Nancy.

Alexandrine "Alexine" Pieternella Françoise Tinne (17 October 1835 – 1 August 1869) was a Dutch explorer in Africa who was the first European woman to attempt to cross the Sahara. She was an early photographer.