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So far Karen has created 121 blog entries.

Helen Reddy

Helen Reddy was born in 1941 in Melbourne into a well-known Australian show business family. Her mother was an actress, singer and dancer and her father a writer, producer and actor. At age four, she joined her parents on the Australian [...]

Audrey Hepburn

Audrey Ruston was born in Belgium in 1929. Her early childhood was sheltered and privileged and the family travelled between London, Brussels, Arnhem and The Hague where she learned five languages. Her father had left the family in 1935, so when [...]

Faith Bandler

Faith's father was abducted from his home in Vanuatu as a 13 year old boy in 1883. His abduction was part of "blackbirding", the slavery trade which brought cheap labour to help establish the Australian sugar industry. He eventually escaped, as [...]

Diana Ross

Diana Ross was born in Detroit in 1944. She began taking classes in clothing design, millinery and pattern making as she aspired to become a fashion designer. However, at fifteen, Diana joined a girl band called the Primettes, and following a [...]

Tina Turner

Anna Mae Bullock was born in Nutbush, Tennessee in 1939, the youngest of three daughters. As a young girl, she sang in the Baptist Church choir. Anna first saw Ike Turner and his band, the Kings of Rhythm, perform in a [...]

Tori Amos

Myra Ellen Amos was born in North Carolina in 1963. A musical prodigy, from the time she could reach the piano, she taught herself to play. When she was two, she could reproduce pieces of music she had only heard once, [...]

Dionne Warwick

Marie Dionne Warrick was born in New Jersey, USA in 1940. Many of Dionne's family were members of the Drinkard Singers, a renowned family gospel group performing in the New York area. Member Cissy Houston, mother of famed singer Whitney Houston, [...]

Joni Mitchell

Roberta Joan Anderson was born in 1943, in Alberta, Canada. Joni struggled at school and her main interest was painting. At age nine, she contracted polio in an epidemic and was hospitalised for weeks. One of her teachers did make an [...]

Carole King

Carol Klein was born in 1942 in New York. Her mother played piano at home and Carol was eager to learn. When Carol was four years old, her mother started teaching her music theory and elementary piano technique, including how to [...]

Vera Wang

Vera Wang was born in 1949, in New York City. The daughter of affluent Chinese immigrants, growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side. A talented figure skater, Vera competed professionally throughout her teens. Upon her graduation from college, Vera began working [...]

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. She was intellectually precocious, fuelled by her father's encouragement; he reportedly would boast, "Simone thinks like a man!" Studying mathematics and literature/languages at private colleges, she completed her degree in Philosophy at [...]

Dr Dian Fossey

Dian Fossey was born in San Francisco in 1932 and trained as an occupational therapist. In 1963 she took a brief trip to Africa, where she met the anthropologist Louis Leakey and had her first glimpse of mountain gorillas. Leakey persuaded [...]

Sophia Loren

Sophia was born in Rome in 1934 in a charity ward for unwed mothers. Her father, Riccardo Scicolone, refused to marry her mother Romilda, leaving her with no support and refusing to allow Sophia's sister to take his last name. The [...]

Faith Thomas

Faith Thomas was the first indigenous woman selected to play any sport for Australia. Faith was born in the Nepabunna Aboriginal mission in South Australia in 1933. Her mother, Ivy, was a traditional Adnyamathana woman from the Flinders Ranges, her father [...]

Ursula K Le Guin

Ursula was born in 1929 in California. Her father was an anthropologist and her mother was a writer. Having earned a Master's degree in French, she began doctoral studies, but abandoned these after her 1953 marriage to historian Charles Le Guin, [...]

Joan Armatrading

Joan Armatrading was born in 1950 in Basseterre on the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts, the third of six children. When she was three years old, her parents moved with their two eldest boys to Birmingham, England, while Joan was sent to live with her [...]

Margaret Fulton

Born in Scotland in 1924, Margaret's parents emigrated to Australia when she was 3 years old. She began as a cooking teacher at the Overseas Corporation in 1947 and was later promoted to sales manager. Gaining a reputation as a Home [...]

Julia Child

Julia McWilliams was born in California in 1912. At six feet, two inches (1.88m) tall, she played tennis, golf, and basketball as a youth and at Smith College, from which she graduated in with a major in History. Julia did not [...]

Susan Ryan

Born in Sydney in 1942, Susan Ryan graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts, followed by a Master of Arts in English Literature from the ANU. Following graduation she served as a delegate to the ACT Labor [...]

Danielle Steel

Danielle Schuelein-Steel was born in New York City in 1947, and spent much of her childhood in France. Danielle started writing stories as a child, and by her late teens had begun writing poetry. From an early age she was included [...]

Dame Carol Kidu

Carol Millwater was born in Brisbane in 1948. Originally trained as a teacher, Carol’s life was transformed when she met her future husband Buri Kidu, a young boy on a colonial scholarship from Papua New Guinea, on a school camp in [...]

Mairead Maguire

Mairead Corrigan was born in 1944 into a Roman Catholic community in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the second of eight children. She became active with the Northern Ireland peace movement after a tragic incident in 1976 where her sister Anne's three young [...]

Mary Blair

Artist, animator, and designer Mary Blair was born in Oklahoma 1911. Her first professional job in the animation industry was as an animator with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, afterwards joining her husband Lee Blair at the Ub Iwerks studio. In the 1930s she was [...]

Rachel Carson

Perhaps the finest nature writer of the Twentieth Century, Rachel Carson is remembered more today as the woman who challenged the notion that humans could obtain mastery over nature by chemicals, bombs and space travel than for her studies of ocean life. [...]

Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy was born in Dublin in 1939, the oldest of the four children. She went on to study at University College Dublin (where she earned a bachelor's degree in history), worked as a teacher of French, Latin, and history at [...]

Diane Bryant

Born in 1962, Californian Diane Bryant had good grades in school, but no one in her family had gone to college before and her family expected her to become a hairdresser. But she had dreams of going to college, enrolling in [...]

Gertrude Stein

Feminist writer, poet, playwright, and art collector, Gertrude Stein was born in Pennsylvania in 1874, the youngest of five children. Gertrude learned several languages before learning English as her family travelled to Europe in the first six years of her life. [...]

Nichelle Nichols

Nichelle was born in Robbins, near Chicago in 1932 where her father was elected mayor of Robbins as well as chief magistrate. She toured the United States, Canada and Europe as a singer with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before turning [...]

Michelle Bachelet

Born in Santiago in 1951, Michelle and her family were living in Chile during the 1973 military coup and subsequent rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Her Air Force Brigadier father was arrested and following months of torture by Pinochet’s Secret Police, [...]

Dr Joyce Brothers

Joyce Bauer was born in New York City in 1927. After attaining a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, she went on study the psychology of behaviour and personality at Columbia University, earning a master’s degree in 1949 and a doctorate in [...]

Mary Barra

When she was appointed Chairwoman and Chief Executive of General Motors in 2014, Mary Barra became the first ever female to head an automobile manufacturer. Born in Detroit in 1961, both Mary's parents are of Finnish descent. Her father Ray worked [...]

Alva Myrdal

Born in 1902 in Uppsala, Sweden, educator Alva Myrdal was one of the most influential social reformers of the 20th century. She was highly critical of developments in the operation of preschools for children in Sweden, becoming director of the National [...]

Martha Graham

Born in Pittsburgh in 1894, Martha Graham has been said to be the one that brought dance into the 20th century. She founded the Martha Graham Dance Company in 1926 (now the oldest dance company in America) and began a five [...]

Maria Shriver

Maria Shriver was born in 1955 into a politically prominent family as the daughter of diplomat Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy (a sister of John F. Kennedy). After earning a B.A. in American studies she forged a career in television journalism [...]

Patsy Adam-Smith

Born in 1924, Patricia Smith was adopted by railway workers, her mother a station-mistress and her father a fettler - growing up in a number of small Victorian country towns and educated at small country schools. In conservative 1950s Australia, Patsy [...]

Coco Chanel

Gabrielle Chanel was born into poverty in the Loire Valley of France in 1883. When her mother died when she was 12, her father sent his two sons to work as farm labourers and his three daughters to a convent. It [...]

Margaret Preston

Born Margaret McPherson in Port Adelaide in 1875, Margaret moved to Melbourne in 1893 where she studied at the National Gallery of Victoria School of Arts under the painter Fredrick McCubbin and Director, Bernard Hall. In 1904 she travelled to Europe [...]

Gloria Steinem

Born in Ohio in 1934, Gloria had an unsettled childhood, living in a trailer from which her father carried out his trade as a roaming antiques dealer, attending school sporadically until she was 11. Before Gloria was born, her mother had [...]

Dr Grace Hopper

Called the "queen of code" and "mother of computing", Grace Hopper was one of the world’s first computer programmers. Hopper attained a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. When she attempted to [...]

Wilma Mankiller

In 1983, Wilma Mankiller was elected the first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation – the first woman ever to serve as chief of a major Native American tribe. Her last name, Mankiller derives from the high military rank achieved by [...]

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