Famous female explorers facts for kids

English writer Gertrude Bell in Iraq, 1909.

Belgian Berthe Cabra.

Japanese climber Junko Tabei.

Hungarian geographer Béláné Mocsáry

Canadian-born Aloha Wanderwell

This is a list of women who explored or travelled the world in a pioneering way. The list may include women naturalists, sailors, mountain climbers, dog sledders, swimmers, pilots, and underwater explorers. Astronauts are not included here but in the list of female astronauts. The list is presented in alphabetical order of surname, but can be sorted to other orders (nationality, dates) by using the arrow-heads in the column headers.

Name	Nationality	Born	Died	Achievement/s
Harriet Chalmers Adams	American	1875	1937	Explored and photographed South America, Asia, South Pacific
Tania Aebi	American	1966		Held the record as the youngest person and first American woman to sail solo around the world (with stops and assistance).
Felicity Aston	British	1977		First person to ski alone across the Antarctic land-mass using only personal muscle power, as well as the first woman to cross the Antarctic land-mass alone
Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey	American	1863	1948	American ornithologist and nature writer, who conducted extensive field work in the American West
Dominick Arduin	French	1960	2004	Disappeared on her attempt to become the first woman to ski alone to the North Pole
Ann Bancroft	American	1955		First woman to travel over the ice cap to the North and South Poles
Jeanne Baré	French	1740	1807	First woman (disguised as a man) to circumnavigate the world
Jean Batten	New Zealander	1909	1982	First person to fly between England and New Zealand solo - broke other records
Carol Beckwith	American	1945		Photographer, author, and filmmaker known for documenting the tribal cultures of Africa, most notably in partnership with Australian photographer Angela Fisher.
Gertrude Bell	British	1868	1926	Explored and mapped Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Arabia
Gertrude Benham	British	1867	1938	Explorer, hiker and mountaineer. Truda Peaks of Mount Rogers is named after her.
Mabel Bent	Anglo-Irish	1847	1929	Explored and excavated with her husband James Theodore Bent in the Eastern Mediterranean, South Africa and Southern Arabia
Laura Bingham	British	1992		Executed expedition to cross continent of South America with no money.
Isabella Bird	British	1831	1904	Explorer, writer and naturalist who travelled by herself through North America, Hawaii, Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Persia, Kurdistan, Turkey, and Morocco.
Nancy Bird-Walton	Australian	1915	2009	Australian aviation pioneer
Nellie Bly	American	1864	1922	Pioneering journalist who travelled around the world in 72 days, the first person to do so.
Alessandra Boarelli	Italian	1838	1908	Italian mountaineer and the first woman to summit Monviso in the Alps in 1864.
Laurence Bougault	French	1970	2018	French poet and long-distance horseback adventurer in Africa, Middle East and Europe.
Louise Bourbonnaud	French	1847	1915	French philanthropist, explorer and writer who traveled alone through North and South America and the Far East.
Louise Arner Boyd	American	1887	1972	Explored Greenland and the Arctic
Beatrix Bulstrode	British	1869	1951	Journalist and writer who traveled through China and Mongolia in 1911-1913.
Susan Butcher	American	1954	2006	Dog musher in Alaska
Berthe Cabra	Belgian	1864	1947	Belgian traveller, first European woman to travel across central Africa from East to West.
Charlotte Cameron	American	1872 or 1873	1946	American traveller and author.
Calamity Jane	American	1852	1903	American frontierswoman and professional scout, known for her claim of being an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok and for fighting Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Renata Chlumska	Czech and Swedish	1973		Climbed Mount Everest, kayaked and bicycled around lower 48 states of USA
Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz	Polish	1936	2021	First woman to sail solo around the world
Kay Cottee	Australian	1954		First woman to sail solo, non-stop around the world
Octavie Coudreau	French	c.1870	c.1910	Early explorer and geographer of the Amazon region in Brazil and French Guiana
Aimée Crocker	American	1864	1941	Heiress, writer spent a decade exploring the Far East in the 1890s. Toured the interior of Java and Borneo.
Sophia Danenberg	American	1972		First black woman to reach summit of Mount Everest
Alexandra David-Néel	French	1868	1969	Travelled to Tibet while closed to foreigners
Robyn Davidson	Australian	1950		2,700 km (1,700 mi) camel trek from Alice Springs to the west coast of Australia
Cassandra De Pecol	American	1989		Traveled to all sovereign nations on a trip from July 24, 2015, to February 2, 2017; she thus obtained the Guinness World Record for "Fastest Person (Female) to Travel to All Sovereign Nations" and is the first documented woman, fastest American, and youngest American to do such a trip.
Laura Dekker	Dutch, German, and New Zealander	1995		Youngest person to sail around world solo
Eva Dickson	Swedish	1905	1938	Swedish explorer, aviator, travel writer and rally driver. The first woman to have crossed the Sahara by car.
Lady Hay Drummond-Hay	British	1895	1946	First woman to circumnavigate the world by air (by Zeppelin)
Edith Durham	British	1863	1944	Explored Albania and the Balkans
Amelia Earhart	American	1897	1937	First woman to fly solo across Atlantic
Isabelle Eberhardt	Swiss	1877	1904	Swiss explorer and writer in Algeria, who converted to Islam and traveled freely dressed as a man.
Gertrude Ederle	American	1905	2003	First woman to swim English Channel
Enid Gordon-Gallien	British	c. 1887	1931	Explored and mapped Kalambo Falls
Barbara Hillary	American	1931	2019	First African American woman to reach North Pole
Amy Johnson	British	1903	1941	Pioneering aviator who set long-distance flying records
Osa Johnson	American	1894	1953	Made films of and wrote books about travels in Africa, South Pacific, Borneo
Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner	Austrian	1970		First woman to climb all fourteen eight-thousander mountains without supplementary oxygen
Alma Maximiliana Karlin	Slovene	1889	1950	World traveler, writer, poet, polyglot and theosophist, who was the second European woman to circle the world solo. In an eight-year travel, she explored North and South America, Oceania, Australia, East Asia, and India.
Mary Kingsley	British	1862	1900	Ethnographer and explorer of West Africa
Belinda Kirk	British	(unknown)		Founder of Explorers Connect. Kirk has travelled across Africa, Nicaragua, and the Chinese Taklamakan Desert. She captained the first all-female rowing team to circumnavigate Britain non-stop.
Lyuba Kutincheva	Bulgarian	1910	1998	Bulgarian traveler and polyglot who traveled for almost a decade (1929–1938) through the Middle East, Far East, northern Africa and Europe.
Gertrude Sanford Legendre	American	1902	2000	American socialite who was a noted explorer and big-game hunter. She contributed rare specimens from Africa, Iran, Southeast Asia, Canada, and Alaska to natural history museums.
Annie Londonderry	Latvian American	1870	1947	First woman to bicycle around the world
Charlotte Mansfield	British	1881	1936	Wrote Via Rhodesia (1911) about her travels in Southern Africa
Beryl Markham	British	1902	1986	British-born Kenyan aviator (one of the first bush pilots), adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.
Sarah Marquis	Swiss	1972		Swiss adventurer and explorer who walked 16,000 km (10,000 mi) across Asia, Siberia and Australia
Elizabeth Sarah Mazuchelli	British	1832	1914	Reportedly first western woman to see Mount Everest; wrote The Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them
Ella Maillart	Swiss	1903	1997	Explorer and travel writer in Asia from the late 1920s through to World War II; wrote Forbidden Journey – From Peking to Kashmir
Annette Meakin	British	1867	1959	First Englishwoman to cross the Trans-Siberian Railway. Wrote about this in "The Ribbon of Iron". Travelled in Russian Turkestan and other parts of Russia.
Ynes Mexia	Mexican-American	1870	1938	Mexican botanist and explorer who started her career at age 55. Discovered one new genus (Mexianthus) and many new species of plants.
Béláné Mocsáry	Hungarian	1845	1917	Hungarian geographer and travel writer who journeyed solo to four continents in the early 1900s.
Dervla Murphy	Irish	1931		Irish travel writer known for cycling alone through Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan to India
Marianne North	British	1830	1890	Prolific English Victorian biologist and botanical artist
Vanessa O'Brien	American and British	1964		First Woman to reach Earth’s Highest (Mt. Everest 8,848m) and Lowest points (Challenger Deep 10,925m)
Ida Pfeiffer	Austrian	1797	1858	Travelled alone around the world in 1847, published books of her numerous travels
Dorothy Pine	American	1920	2011	Possibly first woman to visit all 193 UN-recognised countries
Anésia Pinheiro Machado	Brazilian	1904	1999	Second Brazilian licensed female pilot in Brazil
Odette du Puigaudeau	French	1894	1991	made three trips to northern Africa to conduct field research among the nomads of the western Sahara region and eventually moved to Morocco.
Kate Rice	Canadian	1882	1963	First woman prospector in Northern Canada, writer, and trapper well known for her dog sled abilities
Wanda Rutkiewicz	Polish	1943	1992	Polish mountain climber, the first woman to successfully summit K2
Vefa de Saint-Pierre	French	1872	1967	Global voyager and hunter traveling across North and South America and Australia, writing about her adventures
Kira Salak	American	1971		Travelled in Mali and Papua New Guinea
Annemarie Schwarzenbach	Swiss	1908	1942	Journalist and photographer, travelled to Iran, Afghanistan, Africa
Beryl Smeeton	British	1905	1979	Mountaineer, cruising sailor, overland traveller
Annie Smith Peck	American	1850	1935	First person to climb Mount Nevado Huascarán in the Andes
Hester Stanhope	British	1776	1839	Conducted first modern archaeology in Holy Land; travelled dressed as a man (unveiled)
Freya Stark	British and Italian (French born)	1893	1993	Travelled within and wrote about the Middle East, including the Arabian deserts, Afghanistan
Matilda Coxe Stevenson	American	1849	1915	Ethnologist and geologist who explored the Rocky Mountain region and the Southwest U.S.
Clärenore Stinnes	German	1901	1990	First woman to circumnavigate the world by automobile.
Rosie Swale-Pope	Swiss, Irish, and British	1946		Has run, walked and sailed around the world
Junko Tabei	Japanese	1939	2016	First woman to reach summit of Mount Everest
Annie Edson Taylor	American	1838	1921	First person to survive a trip over the Niagara Falls in a barrel
Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir	Icelandic	980	1019	With her husband, led an expedition to North America
Alexandrine Tinné	Dutch	1835	1869	Dutch explorer in Africa and the first European woman to attempt to cross the Sahara
Adeline Van Buren	American	1889	1949	Along with her sister Augusta Van Buren, they were the first women to ride solo motorcycles across the continental US.
Augusta Van Buren	American	1884	1959	Along with her sister Adeline Van Buren, they were the first women to ride solo motorcycles across the continental US.
Jessica Watson	Australian and New Zealander	1993		Youngest person to sail non-stop and unassisted around the world (but did not fulfil WSSRC criteria)
Aloha Wanderwell	American	1906	1996	First woman to drive around the world
Fanny Bullock Workman	American	1859	1925	American cartographer, explored glaciers in Himalayas

Related pages

• Famous explorers
• Expedition
• Explorer
• List of female spacefarers