Here's a short history of how women are slowly but surely feminizing the industry. 

1600s - 1700s

America’s founding women investors 

Women investors were crucial to the founding of some American colonies, like Jamestown, from the 1600s. Katherine Hueriblock and Rebecca Romney were among the many women invested in the Virginia Company, and both women amassed robust global investment portfolios. Both women were widows, and independently wealthy — which is an important detail, because, at the time, women relinquished all financial power to the men they married.  

“Widows oftentimes became very financially powerful because they had decades of financial expertise, cultivated by working collaboratively with their husbands, and they often had quite a bit of property or resources they inherited from their late husbands,” says historian Sara T. Damiano.

Abigail Adams, the first recorded US woman investor

When John Adams left to fight the War of Indepedence for a full decade in the 1770s, he left the financial responsibilities to his wife, Abigail Adams. In letters he sent to her while he was away, he instructed her to invest in nearby farmlands. Abigail Adams refused. “There is a method of laying out money to more advantage than by the purchase of lands," she told him. 

She invested their money in government bonds and securities instead, becoming the first recorded woman investor in US history, and demonstrating keen investing savvy. Not only did she avoid the speculative bubbles that destroyed the fortunes of many men, she received an astonishing 24% return on her initial investment in government bonds annually.

1800s 

The first woman-founded brokerage firm

It took nearly 80 years after the founding of the American stock market for the first American women stockbrokers to emerge. In 1870, women’s suffrage leader Victoria Woodhull opened the first by-women-for-women brokerage firm in New York City (sounds familiar!) with her sister, Tennessee Claflin. Betting on an untapped market of “society wives and widows, teachers, small-business owners, actresses,” and other marginalized women of society, they made $700,000 in profits in their first six weeks, becoming an instant success. 

They used the brokerage's profits to fund their political newspaper, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, where they preached a radical agenda of equal rights and free love. Woodhull would later become the first woman to be nominated for president, declaring Frederick Douglass as her running mate. Though women didn’t have the right to vote, there were no laws against them running for office. 

Mary Ellen Pleasant, the first self-made millionaire woman 

There's some disagreement about who, exactly, became the first self-made millionaire woman (more on that in a bit). One of those contenders is Mary Ellen Pleasant, a Black abolitionist who helped expand the Underground Railroad and built a fortune off of her successful investments. In 1852, she moved to California to work as a domestic servant, and eavesdropped on the conversations of rich white businessmen for investing tips. 

She built an impressive investment portfolio that included a chain of laundry businesses and boarding houses. She continued her civil rights work as well, taking discrimination cases to court, and donating massive amounts of her wealth to anti-slavery efforts.  

1900s

Madam C. J. Walker, also the first self-made millionaire woman  

The other contender? The daughter of enslaved parents, Madam C. J. Walker — born Sarah Breedlove — started her massively popular hair care line with an investment of just $1.25. She grew the business by selling her products door-to-door and giving demonstrations at churches, and eventually, she employed more than 40,000 women. 

Much of Madam Walker’s fortunes were donated to civil rights organizations like the NAACP, and other important causes. She was said to have become the first self-made millionaire woman by the time she died in 1919, earning the distinction from the Guiness World Records.  

Black Wall Street’s first millionaire investor 

Viola M. Turner, the daughter of poor Black parents, was only 20 years old when she was hired as a cashier-clerk at North Carolina Mutual Insurance in Durham, NC, then known as Black Wall Street. Though she had a business degree, she wasn’t expected to do more than clerical work for the company — but she quickly climbed the ladder, eventually taking charge of the company’s investment stock portfolio, which was mostly made up of mortgages and government bonds. 

She revolutionized their strategy, shifting company assets to stocks and riskier, but carefully researched, investments. Some men at the company dismissed her efforts, referring to it as “her little project.” But Turner’s strategy paid off in the millions, and she eventually became the company’s first woman executive. 

The first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)

Muriel Siebert didn’t even have a college degree, but managed to kick down Wall Street’s doors and become the first woman to buy a seat on the floor of the NYSE. Tired of making less money than men in every job she worked at, she sought an endorsement for her own seat at the exchange. 

Eight men turned her down, but the ninth finally agreed to sponsor her. In 1967, she got her seat, becoming the lone woman in a sea of 1,365 men. There wasn’t a woman’s bathroom on the floor until two decades later. (She threatened to bring in a porta-potty.) She would later go on to become ​​New York’s first woman superintendent of banking.

Want to read more fascinating investing history? We have articles about more powerful Black women in the financial industry, Latinas disrupting money and power, and general women and investing facts to keep in your pocket for your next lively dinner party debate. 

When the time comes for you to make your own history (aka today), trust that you’ll be a woman with a plan. Book a complimentary 15-minute call with us to take your first step.