Simone Lucie-Ernestine-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, known as Simone de Beauvoir, was the philosopher who not only questioned the role of women in society, but dropped the bombshell and changed the game.

​

Born in 1908 in France, she grew up devouring books and soon realised that she wanted more than the traditional fate reserved for women at the time. An intellectual (and sometimes openly amorous) partner of Jean-Paul Sartre, she was one of the most influential voices of existentialism, but her big breakthrough came with The Second Sex, in which she uttered the iconic phrase: ‘One is not born a woman, one becomes one’.

​

The book became a reference for feminism and made many people uncomfortable - a sign that she was on the right track. She died in 1986, but her work lives on, reminding the world that freedom and equality never go out of fashion.