A legendary life
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986
French existentialist writer, philosopher, and feminist theorist whose work transformed modern understandings of women's oppression.
Her story
A life that changed history
Simone de Beauvoir wrote fiction, memoir, philosophy, and political criticism grounded in existentialism and lived experience. Her 1949 study The Second Sex became a foundational work of modern feminist thought, while The Mandarins won the Prix Goncourt. She later identified publicly as a feminist, signed the 1971 Manifesto of the 343, and campaigned for reproductive rights and against colonial violence.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
The Second Sex, 1949; translated by H. M. Parshley, 1953
“To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision.”
The Ethics of Ambiguity, 1947; translated by Bernard Frechtman