Magali Velasco Vargas
She was born in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico in 1975. She is a teacher and doctor at The University of Paris at the Sorbonne. She has received various awards for her work as a writer. She is a researcher and professor, mother of Rodrigo and wife of another successful writer. In spite of her youth, she is one of Mexico’s most solid voices in the contemporary narrative.
Frida Kahlo
She was born in Coyoacán in Mexico City in 1907 and died there in 1954. She is, without doubt, the woman most recognized throughout the world as an artist influenced by her native Mexico. Her work reflects her great strength and energy for living, in spite of the tragic events that brought such suffering. The majority of her work was completed from her bed or bath. She was the wife of the great muralist, Diego Rivera.
Marilyn Monroe
She was born in Los Angeles, California USA June 1, 1926 and died in the same city August 5, 1962. Economic and emotional problems within her family when she was a child did not become insurmountable obstacles in her road towards success. She won many awards and nominations as a major actress. In a short career of only 15 years, she completed 33 films becoming the most prominent movie sex symbol of her time and all time.
María Montessori
She was born in Chiaravalle, Ancona, Italy in 1870. She was an educator, a scientist, a doctor, a psychiatrist, a philosopher, a feminist and a humanist. She studied engineering at 14 years of age and in 1896, she graduated as the first woman doctor in Italy. In 1912 Alexander Graham Bell and his daughter invited her to the United States where they opened the first “Children’s House” in America. She discovered that it is the child who forms the adult with all his or her best and worst characteristics. “The child is the father of the man.” She was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in 1952 at the age of 81 in Holland. Currently, there are Montessori schools throughout the world.
Maria Félix
One of Mexico’s biggest film stars, she has won many awards. She is a woman of beauty and indisputable character who starred in 47 pictures. Agustín Lara, one of her five husbands, composed the song “Maria Bonita” for her, which is still sung by thousands of lovers through the years and throughout the world. “So great and so intense is her beauty, that it hurts,” said French writer and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau. When the director Fernando Palacios approached her, asking her if she would like to make movies, she answered, “Who told you that I want to go into movies? If I feel like it, I’ll do it, but when I want it, it will be through the big door.” She was born in Sonora, Mexico in 1914 and died in Mexico City in 2002.
Oprah Winfrey
She was born in Mississippi in the United States in 1954. She is a television interviewer, an actress, a business woman and a producer. The Oprah Winfrey Show is the most watched talk show in the history of television. Besides that, she is an influential book critic, an actress nominated for an Academy Award and the editor of her own magazine. The magazine, Life, has called her the most influential woman of her generation and Time Magazine named her one of four people who have formed the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st. Business Week called her the greatest black philanthropist in the history of the United States. Forbes magazine estimates that she is the most famous person in the world.
Edith Piaf
She was born in Paris in 1915. In spite of a life marked by misfortune, no French singer has managed to establish themselves as the icon she has become. With each misfortune, Piaf rose once and again to lavish her voice on the world. She died in 1963 in France at 47 years of age. Her music will never die.
Sister Theresa of Calcutta
She was born in Macedonia and died in Calcutta, India in 1997. During more than 40 years, she helped the poor, the sick, orphans and the dying. She was decorated with awards on many occasions all over the world. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. The day of she died; she was going about her ordinary work.
“At times we feel that what we do is only a drop in the sea, but the sea would be less without that drop.”
Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz
She was born in New Spain (the present Mexico) in 1651 and died in 1695. She learned to read and write when she was only 3 years old, taught secretly by her mother whom she tried to convince to send her to the University disguised as a man, given that women were not allowed to attend. While studying a lesson, she would cut a piece of her own hair if she had not learned it correctly, believing that it was wrong that a head was covered by beauty on the outside if it lacked ideas inside. She learned Latin in twenty lessons. She is today the woman who occupies the most distinguished place in Latin American literature. For the importance of her work, she was given two nicknames: The American Phoenix and The 10th Muse. A short time before her death, she was forced by her confessor to dismantle her library and her collection of musical and scientific instruments.
Barbra Streisand
She was born in 1942 in New York, USA. According to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), Barbra Streisand is the woman who has sold more albums in history and who has had more top ten recordings in the United States - more than Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Throughout her career, Streisand has achieved 50 gold records, 30 platinum and 13 multi-platinum. Singer, actress, director, producer, composer and scriptwriter, Barbra Streisand has won 2 Oscars (Best Actress and Best Song), 5 Emmys, 11 Golden Globes and 10 Grammys among other awards. Besides this, she won the American Film Institute’s award for Lifetime Achievement, the national medal of Arts in America and the French Legion of Honor.
Madonna
She was born in Michigan, USA in 1958. She is a singer-songwriter, actress and business woman, and known throughout the world as The Queen of Pop. Her other occupations include being a fashion designer, author of children’s books, movie director and producer. Madonna has sold close to 500 million records throughout the world and holds the world’s record as “most successful woman artist and highest musical sales of all times” by The Guinness Book of World Records.
Marie Curie
She was born in Poland in 1867 and died in France in 1934. She was the second woman in the world to obtain a doctoral degree, the first to be awarded a Nobel Prize and the first person to achieve two Nobel Prizes in two different fields (Physics and Chemistry). After the death of her husband, she assumed the chair that he left vacant at The Sorbonne, and she was the first woman to give classes at the University in the entire 650 years since its founding. She did not patent the process of isolating radium, leaving open investigation to all the scientific community.