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Close up of a Brazilian Flag photo by Marcello Sokal-.

15 Most Influential Brazilian Women

There is a distinct lack of data on women of color, especially Indigenous women, throughout Brazil’s recorded history.

To recreate the lives of Indigenous and Black women and their contributions, much more research is required. However, the relevance of these histories today demonstrates their significance.

In order to create radical political groups and venues, Afro-Brazilian leaders like the politician Érica Malunguinho studied quilombo resistance, villages of emancipated Africans who had escaped, and quilombo warriors like Dandara.

In addition, these are women who, in spite of the divisive political environment under the present president, continue to inspire and live on in the memories of those who remember them. So here are the 15 most influential Brazilian women:

1. Iya Nasso

Iya Nasso, a freed African slave, helped found the first temple devoted to the Candomble Afro-Brazilian spiritual practice in the 1830s.

As priestesses initiated there opened their own temples, the place of worship known as Casa Branca do Engenho Velho would aid in the expansion of Candomble throughout Brazil.

Nasso and her fellow co-founders Iya Adeta and Iya Acala are thought to have been priestesses from the modern-day Nigerian towns of Ketu and Oyo. Her life is not well known.

According to some studies, Nasso finally went back to Africa to study the Orisha cult, but according to other studies, she fled persecution since her son was a key figure in the Male slave insurrection. The Candomble mansion in Salvador, Bahia, is still standing more than 150 years later.

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2. Dandara

In Brazil, Dandara is a divisive personality. She is rumored to have been a fierce capoeira fighter at Quilombo dos Palmares, the largest runaway slave community in Brazil that once had 11,000 residents and lasted for 100 years till it was destroyed in 1695.

She was said to have been the spouse of Zumbi Dos Palmares, the final quilombo monarch.

But Dandara’s placement in the Book of Heroes, a list of historical heroes honored at a sizable cenotaph in Brasilia, last year drew criticism from some academics who contended Dandara was a mythical entity.

Others justified her existence by claiming that historians hadn’t given Dandara’s oral histories the attention they deserved.

3. Maria Quiteria de Jesus

Maria Quitéria photo by Domenico Failutti-.

Quiteria, who was born in 1792, never went to school but learned how to ride horses, go hunting, and use a gun on the Bahia farm where she was raised.

Later, when she joined pro-revolutionary troops in 1822, these abilities would come in handy. In order to disguise her true identity, she cut her hair and dressed in men’s clothing.

When her superiors eventually learned out her secret, they still allowed her to remain in the army because of her physical prowess and fighting prowess.

She attained the positions of cadet and lieutenant in 1823. When she was named an army patron in 1996, the Brazilian government honored her valor.

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4. Madalena Caramuru

The first educated woman in Brazil was Madalena Caramaru, a native Tupinambas lady and the daughter of a Portuguese trader.

Caramaru was taught to read and write by either her father or her husband. She later encouraged the Church to stop abusing Indigenous children and to support women’s access to education in letters to the local Catholic missionary, Father Manuel de Nobrega.

The Portuguese royal family ultimately rejected these petitions, notwithstanding the Father’s positive response.

5. Clementina de Jesus

Clementina de Jesus photo by Unknown-.

According to academics, critics, and admirers, Clementina de Jesus provides evidence that all sonorities referred to as “Brazilian popular music” are influenced by Africa.

There isn’t a finer metaphor to characterize Clementina’s legacy, who revived an allegedly extinct African musical lineage and blended it into Rio’s metropolitan samba.

Clementina, who spent the majority of her life working as a housemaid, was born in the countryside of Rio de Janeiro and migrated to the city as a young kid in 1908.

She was discovered by important MPB producers when she was 63 years old and quickly rose to prominence in the Rio and Brazilian samba scenes.

No modern Roda de samba (the traditional performance space in which musicians form a circle to play samba) reveres Queen Quele, as she is known, and the African legacy that pulses in her songs, influenced by jongo and other Afro-Brazilian music cultures from Rio de Janeiro’s countryside.

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6. Maria Firmina dos Reis

The first abolitionist novel, Ursula, was written by Afro-Brazilian author Maria Firmina dos Reis about 30 years before slavery was outlawed in 1888.

The story is presented from the perspective of a young African girl who is abducted from her hometown and condemned to a lifetime of abuse.

It is a clear-eyed account of life under slavery. Additionally, Ursula is recognized as the first book written by a Brazilian woman.

Firmina, who was the product of a free African man and a white woman, wrote and published abolitionist songs, critical essays, poems, and short stories. Prior to the abolition of slavery, she built Brazil’s first free, multiracial school.

7. Bertha Lutz

Bertha Lutz photo by Unattributed; restored by Adam Cuerden-.

Bertha Lutz, a pioneer of the women’s suffrage movement in Brazil and the daughter of a Swiss-Brazilian doctor and a British nurse, was born in Brazil.

Women’s rights organizations, primarily made up of educated, white women, are credited with growing as a result of her feminist manifesto, which was published in Revista da Semana in 1918.

In 1922, she started the Brazilian Federation for the Advancement of Women, which in a decade helped gain women’s voting rights. However, the same literacy requirements males had to take also limited women’s access to the vote.

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8. Tais Araujo

Tais Araujo played the first Black woman protagonist in a telenovela in 1996, a time when Black representation on popular Brazilian television remained low.

Xica Silva, an African slave who rose to become one of the richest ladies in the area thanks to her love for a Portuguese knight, was the subject of the 231-episode television series.

She continued to play significant roles, one of which made her the first Black woman to star in a primetime telenovela.

9. Elizeth Cardoso

Elizeth Cardoso photo by Unknown-.

Elizeth Cardoso, often known as “The Divine” and “The Magnificent,” served as an inspiration for many vocalists in later generations, including Clara Nunes, a legend of MPB.

Cardoso’s amazing vocal range and emotional singing have led composer Chico Buarque to refer to her as “the mother of all Brazilian vocalists.”

The Divine, who was admired by none other than jazz great Sarah Vaughan, was also immensely versatile; over the course of 44 recordings, she experimented with jazz, bossa nova, samba-canço, intellectual music, and choro.

This legendary radio diva has also contributed iconic songs to the MPB canon, such “Chega de Saudade” in 1958. Elizeth has performed samba frequently during her career, and her collection of just samba songs is only anthological.

10. Laudelina de Campos Melo

Laudelina de Campos Melo, who worked as a maid since she was seven years old and had direct knowledge of the mistreatment of domestic workers, established the first domestic workers’ organization in Brazil in 1936.

She participated actively in both the Communist Party and the Black Brazilian Front, the largest federation of Black rights groups in Brazil, at this time. Her campaigning in the 1970s aided domestic workers in obtaining a work permit and social security.

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11. Maria da Penha

Maria da Penha photo by Cesar Itiberê-.

Women’s rights advocate Maria da Penha worked to pass legislation that toughened penalties for perpetrators of domestic violence, established courts with expertise in these cases, and offered round-the-clock shelters for victims.

Her two attempted murders, which left her paraplegic, are what inspired her action. Due to structural flaws in the judicial systems that benefited the offenders in domestic abuse cases, her ex-husband, the perpetrator of the attacks, avoided prison for more than 19 years.

He ultimately spent a year behind bars. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights upheld Da Penha’s position after hearing her case. The Maria da Penha statute was adopted in 2006.

12. Dilma Rousseff

Before Dilma Rousseff became Brazil’s first female president, she was a young militant who joined urban Marxist guerrilla organizations that resisted the military dictatorship that ruled the country during the coup d’etat of 1964.

She was ultimately apprehended, subjected to torture, and sentenced to three years in prison for her guerilla operations.

After being freed, Rousseff devoted herself to politics and restructured the Brazilian Labor Party.

She held the office of president after serving in many presidential cabinets from 2011 until her impeachment in 2016 on grounds of criminal administrative malfeasance and contempt for the government budget.

13. Erica Malunguinho

The first transgender candidate for state congress is Érica Malunguinho. Malunguinho, who was born in 1981 in Recife, went to So Paulo at the age of 19 and began to transition.

She immersed herself in politics, the arts, and culture, finally establishing what she called an urban quilombo—a reference to the Black free towns built under slavery—as a cultural hub.

Malunguinho, an established Afro-Brazilian and LGBTQ leader at the time of Marielle Franco’s murder, made the choice to run for state congress on Franco’s behalf as a member of the Socialism and Liberty Party.

14. Leci Brandao

Leci Brandao  was a pioneer in the samba world, much like Dona Ivone. Leci is the first female composer of Mangueira, one of Rio de Janeiro’s oldest and most renowned samba schools.

She is a self-taught vocalist and percussionist. The most striking aspect of Brando’s musical personality is the progressive nature of her lyrics. Songs like “Deixa, Deixa” or “Zé do Caroço” tackle social inequity in Brazil, while “Ombro Amigo” reflects on women’s sexual liberation.

Leci, a law student, has also been heavily interested in politics. In the State of So Paulo’s Legislative Assembly, she switched to the left in 2010.

Samba has always been in Leci’s musical DNA, despite her career-long experiments in various genres including samba-jazz, bolero, and samba-reggae.

15. Marielle Franco

Marielle Franco, a Black bisexual woman who was reared in Rio de Janeiro’s Mare favela, conducted an activist and city council candidate campaign against gender violence, police brutality, militarism, and reproductive rights.

In March 2018, she was killed by unidentified assailants in an incident that resulted in widespread demonstrations across Brazil and the rest of the world.

Her murder may have been related to her work criticizing police brutality in the favelas and paramilitary organizations made up of retired and off-duty officers.

Last year, five people—including two police officers—were charged with obstructing justice after two former police officers were detained in connection with her slaying.