Simone de Beauvoir
1908–1986 · French (Paris) · Existentialism / Second-Wave Feminism
Known for: Author of The Second Sex—the foundational feminist text. Also The Mandarins, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
Simone de Beauvoir was Sartre's lifelong intellectual partner but fiercely independent—she rejected his marriage proposal and maintained her own lovers. The Second Sex (1949), arguing 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,' launched second-wave feminism.
She was brilliant, disciplined, and politically engaged—protesting the Algerian War, supporting May 1968. She was warm in person but ruthless in argument. She proved that a woman could be a first-rank public intellectual on her own terms.
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