Barbara Bodichon
(1827-1891)

Barbara Bodichon (née Barbara Leigh Smith) was an early campaigner for women's rights. 

The daughter of the Radical MP for Norwich, and a cousin of Florence Nightingale, Barbara Bodichon was a famous philanthropist and one of the founders of Gerton College, Cambridge. She was married to Eugène Bodichon, a French diplomat.

She was also an amateur painter and water-colourist. In a letter to Christina Rossetti dated 8 November 1853, D.G. Rossetti wrote: 'Ah if you were only like Miss Barbara Smith! a young lady I met at the Howlets', blessed with large rations of tin, fat, enthusiasm, and golden hair, who thinks nothing of climbing up a mountain in breeches, or wading through a stream in none, in the sacred name of pigment.'