Women Whose Image Has Been on Money Around the World

Danish-born Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928 for her vivid depictions of life in the Scandinavian regions during the Middle Ages. Much of her work was inspired by her father, who was an archeologist.

As a painter and sculptor, Sophie Taeuber-Arp spent her life challenging the boundaries of art as a designer of textiles, beadwork, costumes, furniture, and interiors in pre-World War II Europe.

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz has been called the first great Latin American poet and one of the most important Hispanic literary figures. She created beloved sonnets in the Spanish language, and also excelled as a dramatist. De la Cruz was persecuted for being an intellectual, a woman, and a nun.

Nine years before Rosa Parks defied whites-only accommodations in Alabama in 1955, Viola Desmond, who was Black, challenged racial bias in Canada when she refused to leave the segregated whites-only section in a theater in Nova Scotia. She was arrested and jailed, and wasn’t pardoned until 2010, 45 years after her death.

Zenobia was the queen of the Palmyrene Empire, which spanned parts of Syria, Egypt, Saudia Arabia, and Asia Minor. She challenged Roman authority during the third century A.D. until the Romans defeated her. She claimed ancestry from Dido of Carthage and Cleopatra of Egypt.