20th-century French women writers

Françoise Madeleine Hardy (17 January 1944-11 June 2024) was a French singer-songwriter and actress. Mainly known for singing melancholic sentimental ballads, Hardy rose to prominence in the early 1960s as a leading figure of the yé-yé wave. In addition to her native French, she also sang in English, Italian and German. Her career spanned more than fifty years with over thirty studio albums released.

Anna Karina (born Hanne Karin Bayer, 22 September 1940 – 14 December 2019) was a Danish-French film avant garde actress, director, writer, and singer. She was French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard's muse in the 1960s, performing in several of his films, including The Little Soldier, A Woman Is a Woman, My Life to Live, Bande à part (Band of Outsiders), Pierrot le Fou (Crazy Pete) and Alphaville. For her performance in A Woman Is a Woman, Karina won the Silver Bear Award for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival.

Cécile Aubry (3 August 1928 – 19 July 2010) was a French film actress, author, television screenwriter and director.

Sarah Bernhardt (born Henriette-Rosine Bernard; 22 or 23 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including La Dame Aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas, fils; Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo, Fédora and La Tosca by Victorien Sardou, and L'Aiglon by Edmond Rostand. She also played male roles, including Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rostand called her "the queen of the pose and the princess of the gesture", while Hugo praised her "golden voice". She made several theatrical tours around the world, and was one of the first prominent actresses to make sound recordings and to act in motion pictures.

Nicole Calfan (born 4 March 1947) is a French actress and author.

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known mononymously as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 and was also known as a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best remembered for her 1944 novella Gigi, which was the basis for the 1958 film and the 1973 stage production of the same name.

Christine Pascal (29 November 1953 – 30 August 1996) was a French actress, writer and director.

Corinne Luchaire (11 February 1921 – 22 January 1950) was a French film actress who was a star of French cinema on the eve of World War II. Her association with the German occupation led her to be sentenced to "national indignity" after the war, and after writing an autobiography, she died from tuberculosis aged only 28.

Marie-France Boyer (born 22 April 1938 in Marseille) is a French actress, singer and the author of many internationally published non-fiction books on France. She appeared from 1959 until 1976 in more than a dozen feature films and several TV shows.

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ;), 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.