Founded in 1876 by the Girls’ Day School Trust, Brighton Girls has provided an education to some remarkable women from the very start. Many of our former pupils have gone on to be pioneers in their fields, and we are proud to be part of their journey.
Dame Fiona Elizabeth Murray DCMG CBE, Class of 1986, is the Associate Dean for Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is a member of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom’s Council for Science and Technology. In 2020, Murray showed that women scientists are less likely to score highly on their grant applications because of the words that they use. Specifically, women are 16 % less likely to score highly on their grant proposals, which Murray attributes to different communication styles between men and women. She found that women use fewer of reviewer’s favourite words, and more of the words that are associated with lower scores. She also studied the differences between men and women’s patenting rates, as well as investigating where women inventors are located.
She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to science, technology and diversity.
In November 2022, Rosemary was selected as an ESA career astronaut. The first British female to be selected.
British philanthropist and mental health reformer. Grace looked after people all her life and the organisation she created, the Guardianship Society, is now known as the Grace Eyre Foundation. She believed that people with disabilities should be cared for in the community.
The Grace Eyre Foundation is one of the oldest charities in Brighton.
Dr Louisa Martindale – Brighton’s first female GP. Physician, surgeon, and writer. She also served as magistrate on the Brighton bench, was a prison commissioner and a member of the National Council of Women. She served with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals at Royaumont Abbey in France in World War I, and as a surgeon in London in World War II. Through her writings she promoted medicine as a career for women. Largely responsible for the foundation of the New Sussex Women’s Hospital.
Royal Holloway College, London School of Medicine for Women.
The new building at the Royal Sussex County Hospital was named in her honour in November 2022.
Constance Garnett (née Black), sister of English writer, feminist and pioneering trade unionist, Clementina Black, had never left Sussex when she joined Newnham College, Cambridge, as a scholar at 17. She read Classics and Mathematics, honing her skills in the art of translation and the expression of precise meanings. She began learning Russian just before she turned 30 when she became friends with a gang of fiery exiles. Constance translated 71 volumes of Russian into English – the first to translate Checkhov and Dostoevsky.
“Her friend D. H. Lawrence described her sitting in the garden accumulating a tottering pillar of sheets on the grass alongside her. Of her Turgenev, Joseph Conrad, another friend, wrote, “She is in that work what a great musician is to a great composer—with something more, something greater. It is as if the interpreter had looked into the very mind of the Master and had a share in his inspiration.”
Sara Wheeler
Essayist, poet and novelist, the first Jewish woman to be admitted to Newnham College, Cambridge University in 1879. Whilst at Brighton she made lifelong friends with Constance and Clementina Black. Her letters show how much she admired Brighton’s first Head, Edith Creak, who was a profound influence for Levy’s model for what her era called the ‘New Woman’ —autonomous and achievement-oriented. Amy was a trail-blazer, who challenged the status quo. She died tragically young at the age of 27, unable to reconcile what Oscar Wilde described as ‘the cravings of her heart’ with the reality of her life. Oscar Wilde wrote an obituary which praised her gifts. A rebel to the end she left instructions to be cremated, contrary to Jewish law, and is therefore also the first Jewish woman to be cremated in England.
Poet and social reformer, Blanche Baughan was one of the first women to attend Royal Holloway College when it opened to students studying for University of London degrees. She left in 1891 having gained the first first-class honours BA degree in Classics. She had already been actively involved in the suffrage movement during her student days and soon after Baughan became involved in social work in the slums of Shoreditch and Hoxton, in East London. Whilst tutoring the Duchess of Bedford, and some of her friends – Blanche’s experience of the slums vividly highlighted the vast gulf between rich and poor in England crystallising her views on social reform. Blanche settled in New Zealand in 1900, going on to found the New Zealand Howard League for Penal Reform in 1924. Her study of male and female prisoners, People in prison, was a controversial indictment of the treatment of prisoners and led to friction with those running prisons. She was especially critical of the treatment of prisoners with psychiatric disorders.
In 1935, she was awarded the King George V Silver Jubilee Medal.
A pioneer of her time, Dr Annette Benson was the director and medical officer at the Cama and Albless Hospital, Bombay. She was an able administrator and was deeply concerned about the working conditions of women doctors. With the idea of improving their condition, she formed the “Association of Medical Women in India” in 1907 the first medical association of women in the world. The organisation proposed to advance the interests of medical women in India. Benson, the first President of AMWI, committedly worked towards raising its reputation in international forums. Complaints such as undue requirements of subordination to men, unlawful sudden dismissals, lack of incremental rates of pay and work-related and study-leave rules, provisions for retirement were frequently heard.
On 1st January 1914, the Women’s Medical Service was established by the Government of India and administered and financed by a revised Central Committee of the Dufferin Fund. The new service supplied medical relief to that segment of Indian women who for social or religious prejudice were unable to go to an ordinary hospital.
Annette’s campaigning work made it possible for women doctors to serve in the military hospitals during the 1st World War.
A museum opened at the hospital in 2019 focusing on Indian women doctors and their achievements, including Dr Benson.
“The first few women doctors were brave, dynamic ladies whose life stories are a source of inspiration. With this museum, we would like to motivate our students by showing them the devotion these women had for this hospital,” Dr Amita Joshi, current medical superintendent of the hospital.
Rosalie Lulham, zoologist, social campaigner and educator, alumnae of Royal Holloway and Lecturer at Kings College London. Rosalie was a lecturer in Natural History from 1900-35, and Vice Principal from 1932-35 at the Froebel Educational Institute. Alongside her academic career Rosalie also took a great interest in the ‘social question’. In 1913 she went to Birmingham and there began to engage in social work. She had previously organised holidays for 5-year-olds and worked with blind children; but in Birmingham she worked at the Settlement in Summer Lane, a welfare centre for the poor when there was no welfare state.
Author of “From One Generation to Another” (with her sibling Louisa). Hilda Martindale (1875-1952) was one of the first female civil servants and sought to improve working conditions, particularly for women, throughout her life. She joined the Home Office as a factory inspector in 1901 and became Deputy Chief Inspector of Factories in 1925. She then moved to the Treasury where she worked until her retirement – latterly in the prestigious role of Director of Women Establishments, with responsibility for 77,000 women civil servants. She founded The Hilda Martindale Trust in 1952 to fund British women attempting to establish themselves in professions dominated by men. The fund is still awarded annually.
In 1918 she was a recipient of one of the 1918 Birthday Honours – as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
Royal Holloway College, University of London
Morgan was born in Petworth and attended Brighton and Hove High School in the early 1900s, going on to the Goldmiths’ College of Art from 1926. She followed this with attendance at the progressive art school the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in Pimlico, championing wood engraving and linocuts. Morgan was commissioned to illustrate several books including Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Grimms’ Other Tales. Much of her work was inspired by the South Downs and her hometown of Petworth. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, an Honorary Member of the Society of Wood Engravers, a Member of the National Society of Painters, Sculptor and Engravers, and regularly showed work at their annual exhibitions. She also exhibited at the Royal Academy. Her prints are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum in London, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, among others.
After attending Brighton High School Theodora Lisle Prankerd went on to study botany Royal Holloway, University of London, first supported by a Founders scholarship, and then a Driver Scholarship. She graduated with 1st Class Honours in 1903,and then worked as a school teacher from 1904 to 1911, and was appointed as a lecturer in botany at Bedford College in 1912 to 1917. During this time she was a also a part-time Reader in Botany at Birkbeck College, London. In 1917 came an appointment as lecturer in botany at the University of Reading, where she lectured until her death. She gained her Doctor of Sciences degree from the University of London in 1929. Between 1922 and 1936 she published a series of pioneering studies in the growth of ferns in response to gravity (geotropism). Although she was credited with all the research and authorship of the published papers, her work was presented at various scientific meetings by male colleagues.
With godparents Walter de la Mare, who dedicated poems to her, the poet Cecil-Day Lewis, and the children’s author Eleanor Farjeon a creative future was perhaps inevitable for young Elisabeth. Also known as Liza Beresford, author of children’s books, best known for creating The Wombles. Born into a literary family, Liza worked as a journalist but found fame with her whimsical creation The Wombles, which along with their recycling theme, became popular with children across the world. The inspiration for the characters sprung from a walk on Boxing Day on Wimbledon Common, when her daughter referred to it as Wombledon Common.
The Beresford Building at school is named after her, and Wombles can occasionally still be seen wandering the corridors looking to “Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish”.
Whilst at Brighton Girls, Sally developed a passion and talent for languages, and having taken her A-levels early by 1963 she was living in Paris as a student at the Sorbonne. Upon returning to England Sally took up language tuition and translation, whilst also importing radios! A committed humanist, she managed to juggle having four children with voluntary work with young offenders, becoming a magistrate, and undertook a degree at the LSE. She continued her teaching as a lecturer in European affairs prior to joining Age Concern England. She became Director General from 1987 until 2000, joint Chair of the Age Concern Institute of Gerontology at King’s College London, and Secretary General of Eurolink Age.
Greengross was made OBE in 1993 and was the recipient of nine honorary degrees.
Most famous for her role in Ever Decreasing Circles, in the role of Hilda. Geraldine had a successful career in television and film appearing in television blockbusters such as Minder, Heartbeat, Keeping Up Appearances, Two’s Company, Mapp & Lucia and many more. Geraldine appeared in 30 film and television series during her career. Her films included Adam Adamant Lives!, Albert! and Six Days of Justice.
Diamond miner! After leaving Brighton Girls, Maureen studied Geology at the University of St Andrews and then made her way to Perth, Australia. She became known as both an intrepid British geologist and mining executive – discovering the biggest diamond mine in the world in 1979 in Western Australia. The most significant diamond deposit ever found, the Australian Argyle Diamond Mine was the biggest diamond mine (by volume produced) for much of the time it was in operation. She died of a stroke in 2010 whilst prospecting.
British academic, Liberal Democrat politician, member of the House of Lords, and former junior government minister.
Journalist and fashion critic. After attending Brighton and Hove High School (Class of 1962) Suzy went to study dressmaking in Paris returning to England to study History at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, where she became the first female editor of Varsity, the renowned student newspaper.
In her role as Editor, Vogue International (2014-2020), she reported for 26 print and digital editions of Vogue in 18 languages, reaching an audience of over 74 million.
With countless honours to her name, Suzy is the world’s most famous fashion journalist.
Founder of the fashion label English Eccentrics. After attending Brighton & Hove High School Helen went on to study fashion and textiles at Camberwell School of Art, followed by post graduate studies at Central St. Martins. After completing her studies Helen founded English Eccentrics in 1983. By the 1990’s English Eccentrics reached popular and critical acclaim in winning the Glamorous Evening Wear category at the British Fashion Awards in 1999. In addition, Helen’s innovative designs became recognised worldwide after being worn by famous fans of the brand including Mick Jagger and Princess Diana among many others.
In the late nineties Helen decided to focus on other artistic projects, working as an artist from her London studio and focusing on various causes, from arts and education to female human rights.
International Journalist. As an international journalist Frances Sellers covered the 2016 USA presidential campaign, and was a member of the team that wrote the 2016 best-seller “Trump Revealed”. Sellers’ career as a reporter, editor and moderator has ranged widely from politics to the arts and sciences. She has written extensively about the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s political polarisation and cultural upheaval.
Olympic Swimmer. During her 20 year international career Karen won 35 major championship medals and 38 National titles despite breaking her back in a car accident in 1996. She was 4 times World champion, broke 2 World Records and competed at 4 consecutive Olympic Games.
Alex von Tunzelmann, Class of 1996, is a historian, columnist and screenwriter. She studied History at University College, University of Oxford. After this Alex worked as a researcher and columnist, including Reel History, a weekly column about historical movies for The Guardian Film Online.
In addition to her screenwriting and journalism, Alex is the author of five books, including the internationally bestselling Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire. Her most recent book, Fallen Idols, has been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2022.