Leontine Mary Jane Cooper
22 April 1837 — 12 March 1903
Leontine Mary Jane Cooper (2A‑29‑11)
Leontine Cooper was Queensland's most significant writer addressing the rights of white women during the women's suffrage movement in Queensland. Born in England in 1837, daughter of a French merchant father and English mother, she arrived in Brisbane with her husband in 1871. A schoolteacher during the 1870's, she was to become a prominent Brisbane literary figure over the next two decades.
By the late 1880's she was one of the key activists for social justice and women's suffrage. Leontine Cooper died suddenly from bronchial pneumonia on 12 March 1903, at the age of 66, sadly before she was able to cast a vote in the 1903 federal election or to see the granting of the right to vote to Queensland women for which she had so passionately fought.