Notable : Book Collection : Profiles Of Women

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.

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (20 June 1786 – 23 July 1859) was a French poet and novelist.
She was born in Douai. Following the French Revolution, her father's business was ruined, and she traveled with her mother to Guadeloupe in search of financial help from a distant relative. Marceline's mother died of yellow fever there, and the young girl somehow made her way back to France. At age 16, back in Douai, she began a career on stage. In 1817 she married her husband, the "second-rate" actor Prosper Lanchantin-Valmore.She published Élégies et Romances, her first poetic work, in 1819. In 1821 she published the narrative work Veillées des Antilles. It includes the novella Sarah, a contribution to the genre of slave stories in France.Marceline appeared as an actress and singer in Douai, Rouen, the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, where she notably played Rosine in Beaumarchais's Le Barbier de Séville. She retired from the stage in 1823. She later became friends with the novelist Honoré de Balzac, and he once wrote that she was an inspiration for the title character of La Cousine Bette.The publication of her innovative volume of elegies in 1819 marks her as one of the founders of French Romantic poetry. Her poetry is also known for taking on dark and depressing themes, which reflects her troubled life. She is the only female writer included in the famous Les Poètes maudits anthology published by Paul Verlaine in 1884. A volume of her poetry was among the books in Friedrich Nietzsche's library.

Noëlle Châtelet (French pronunciation: [nɔɛl ʃɑtlɛ]); born 16 October 1944 as Noëlle Jospin) is a French writer and lecturer at the Paris Descartes University in the humanities. She is the author of essays, collections of short stories and novels translated into several languages.

Françoise Chandernagor (born 15 June 1945, Palaiseau) is a French writer. The daughter of André Chandernagor, she is a former student of the École nationale d'administration, and she became a member of the Council of State in 1969.