Reference

Women on Banknotes: The Complete World List

For most of the history of paper money, the women on it were not people. They were allegories: Liberty, Britannia, Justice. Real women with names arrived late, and they are still outnumbered. This page lists the ones you can hold, country by country, with the denomination and the years each note was issued.

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Last updated: September 2026

How many countries have women on their banknotes?

Around 46 countries have had or currently have a banknote in circulation featuring at least one woman, a number that has grown slowly but steadily over the past two decades, according to the Bank of Canada Museum.

That figure sounds larger than the experience of actually finding one in a wallet. The Bank of England has put 16 different men on its notes as the main historical character and 3 women (Bank of England Museum). The Bank of Canada has issued 54 banknotes in its history; 24 have featured a woman or girl, but remove Queen Elizabeth II from that tally and only 6 remain, of which just 2 show a woman who was not a royal (Bank of Canada Museum, 26 May 2026).

There is a pattern in who gets chosen, too. The Bank of Canada Museum notes that while male portrait subjects tend to be politicians, scientists or athletes, the women selected have more often worked in the arts, nursing, education or humanitarian causes, and that the most common occupation among women on banknotes is poet or writer. Our list bears that out.

Which women are on banknotes? The world list

The table below lists 20 banknote appearances by real, named women, each one confirmed against the issuing central bank, its museum, a national museum record or the PMG catalogue listing. Notes we could not verify against a primary source were left out rather than padded in.

Sources by row: Bank of England Museum and the Bank of England's withdrawn banknotes and polymer £10 pages for the UK rows; the Bank of Canada Museum for Canada, Norway, Scotland and the Dominican Republic; the Reserve Bank of Australia denomination pages for Australia; Banco de México for Mexico; the Banco Central de Costa Rica for the 20,000 colones; and uscurrency.gov for Martha Washington.

Which women have appeared on British banknotes?

Three real women have been the main character on a Bank of England note: Florence Nightingale from 1975, Elizabeth Fry from 2002, and Jane Austen from 2017. A fourth woman, Queen Elizabeth II, appeared on every denomination as the monarch rather than as a chosen character.

Nightingale came first. The Bank of England Museum records her as "the first historical woman to feature on one of our notes", on the Series D ten pound note issued on 20 February 1975. The background scene shows her at the Scutari hospital during the Crimean War with five other nurses, and her portrait was worked up from two photographs taken for cartes de visite shortly after she returned to Britain in 1856. The note ceased to be legal tender on 20 May 1994 (Bank of England).

Elizabeth Fry followed on the five pound note first issued on 21 May 2002. Fry was a Quaker prison reformer who began working inside Newgate in 1813, and the banknote portrait is based on an engraving by Mary Martha Pearson, reversed by designer Emma Cook so it would sit correctly in the layout. That note ceased to be legal tender on 5 May 2017.

The selection process has since changed. The Bank's current five pound note features Sir Winston Churchill, and Austen's polymer ten followed in 2017 (Bank of England). Since 2015 the Bank has chosen characters from a list of names suggested by the public, a change its museum ties explicitly to showing the diversity of people who have shaped British life and culture. The same page notes that Bank of England notes featuring King Charles III began circulating on 5 June 2024 and now co-circulate with Queen Elizabeth II notes. For the monarch who outnumbers every other woman on paper money, see our page on Queen Elizabeth II banknotes, and for the wider design question, portraits on banknotes.

Which women are on Australian banknotes?

Australia has a woman on every denomination it issues, which is closer to parity than any other currency on this page. Mary Gilmore, Mary Reibey, Edith Cowan and Nellie Melba each share a note with a man, one to a side, and Queen Elizabeth II holds the five dollar note on her own.

The Reserve Bank's Next Generation series, issued between 2016 and 2020, carried over the portraits from the first polymer series rather than replacing them. Mary Reibey is on the twenty dollar note released on 9 October 2019: a convict transported from England at thirteen who took over her husband's shipping and trading business after his death in 1811 and expanded it. The microprint on the note lists the ships she owned, from the Edwin to the Raven, and the only known likeness of her is a miniature watercolor on ivory from around 1835 (Reserve Bank of Australia).

Edith Cowan is on the fifty dollar note released on 18 October 2018. She became the first Australian woman to enter parliament when she was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia in 1921, and the note shows the gumnut brooch she had made to signal that entering parliament was "a tough nut to crack" for women (Reserve Bank of Australia). Dame Mary Gilmore, on the ten dollar note released on 20 September 2017, campaigned for votes for women, old-age and invalid pensions and child endowment, and the note's microprint carries lines from her poem No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest. Dame Nellie Melba, on the hundred dollar note released on 29 October 2020, was the first Australian on the cover of Time magazine, in 1927. More on the series in our history of Australian banknotes and our New Zealand banknotes page.

Which woman is on New Zealand's banknotes?

Kate Sheppard has appeared on New Zealand's 10 dollar note since 1992, across three issues: the paper note of 1992 to 1997, the polymer note of 1999 and the Series 7 note issued on 12 October 2015. She led the suffrage movement that won New Zealand women the vote in 1893, and camellia flowers appear beside her portrait on every version.

The PMG catalogue records the three notes as Pick 178, printed by Thomas De La Rue (PMG World Paper Money Price Guide), Pick 186, the 1999 polymer issue printed by Note Printing Australia, and Pick 192, the Series 7 note. Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand's national museum, holds a Series 7 example and records its 12 October 2015 issue date and its printer, the Canadian Bank Note Company (Te Papa, object 1525108); its record for Sheppard gives her dates as 1847 to 1934 and places her "at the forefront of the suffrage movement which succeeded in gaining votes for women in 1893" (Te Papa, object 1596953). The full series history is on the New Zealand banknotes hub.

Which women are on banknotes in the Americas?

Mexico currently has three women on circulating notes, second only to Australia in this table. Canada has Viola Desmond on the ten dollar note, Costa Rica has the writer Carmen Lyra on its 20,000 colones, and the Dominican Republic honors the Mirabal sisters on its 200 peso note.

Viola Desmond is the more famous case. The Bank of Canada describes her as "a successful black businesswoman who was jailed, convicted and fined for defiantly refusing to leave a whites-only area of a movie theatre in 1946", and the vertical ten dollar note pairs her portrait with a historic map of the North End of Halifax where her beauty studio stood (Bank of Canada). She was the second non-royal woman on a Bank of Canada note, after Agnes MacPhail on the 2017 commemorative ten.

Mexico's G series is quietly the most interesting. Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, the seventeenth-century poet Banco de Mexico calls "the most important poet/writer of novo Hispanic literature", holds the 100 peso note that entered circulation on 12 November 2020. The 1,000 peso note, in circulation from 19 November 2020, puts two women beside President Francisco I. Madero: Hermila Galindo and Carmen Serdan, described by the central bank as driving forces of the revolutionary ideals of democracy, equality and justice (Banco de México). See our hub on Mexico banknotes for the wider series.

Costa Rica's 20,000 colones note carries Maria Isabel Carvajal, who wrote under the name Carmen Lyra, with a hummingbird on the reverse (Banco Central de Costa Rica). The Dominican Republic's 200 peso note of 2015 shows Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal, sisters assassinated on 25 November 1960 for opposing the Trujillo dictatorship; that date is now the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Who were the first women on banknotes?

There is no single global first, and any page that claims one is guessing. What the primary sources do support is that symbolic women came long before real ones, and that the earliest named women were usually queens.

The Bank of Canada Museum sets out the sequence plainly: the earliest images of women on most currencies were generic and symbolic, standing for liberty, prosperity or the nation itself, and only later did real portraits appear, mostly of queens and royals. Lady Liberty in the United States, Britannia in the United Kingdom and Helvetia in Switzerland are all allegories rather than people. When the Bank of Canada issued its first series in 1935, six of the nine denominations carried a symbolic female figure on the back and not one of them was a real woman.

In the United States, the earliest documented appearance of a real woman is Martha Washington on the one dollar silver certificates of the 1886 and 1896 series (uscurrency.gov). The same 1896 Educational Series used allegorical women throughout, with history instructing youth on the one dollar note. Women also reached American money through signatures. Azie Taylor Morton became the first African-American woman whose signature appeared on a Federal Reserve note when she took office as the 36th Treasurer of the United States in 1977, and Series 2021 notes carry two women's signatures for the first time, those of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Treasurer Chief Lynn Malerba.

Will a woman appear on the US 20 dollar bill?

The Treasury announced on 20 April 2016 that Harriet Tubman would appear on the front of a redesigned twenty dollar note. That announcement is now archived content on the Treasury's own site, and no note has been issued.

The plan was broader than the twenty. In an open letter, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said that "for the first time in more than a century, the front of our currency will feature the portrait of a woman", and set out designs for three denominations at once: Tubman on the front of the twenty with the White House and Andrew Jackson on the reverse; the reverse of the ten showing the 1913 suffrage march that ended on the Treasury steps and honoring Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul; and the reverse of the five honoring Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr at the Lincoln Memorial (US Department of the Treasury, 20 April 2016). The letter said all three designs would be unveiled in 2020, for the centenary of the Nineteenth Amendment. That did not happen, and we are not going to print a projected release date we cannot source.

How do you collect banknotes featuring women?

Build it as a themed set rather than a country set. A dozen notes will take you from an allegorical figure of the 1890s to a civil rights advocate on polymer, and most of the modern ones are still affordable in uncirculated grade.

Three approaches work well. Chase the withdrawn issues, because their supply is fixed and no more Nightingale or Fry notes will be printed. Collect one note per country, which spreads the set across continents. Or collect firsts: the first woman on a country's money, the first non-royal, the first signature.

Condition does most of the work on value for modern notes, so learn the ladder in our banknote grading guide before you buy, and consider certified examples from PMG or PCGS for anything you intend to keep long term. Planet Banknote's current Great Britain selection runs to certified Bank of England five pound notes of 1980 to 1991 carrying Queen Elizabeth II, and the wider banknotes by country collection is the place to start a themed hunt. If you are new to the hobby, our guide on how to collect world banknotes covers the first decisions.

Planet Banknote is a family-owned dealership in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 2021. Every note is sourced direct from mints, central banks, and authorized distributors, inspected through our Planet Banknote Verified process, and ships with a free Certificate of Authenticity. US orders ship free via USPS Priority, and every order includes a free bonus gift.