Henriette bùi Quang Chiêu (1906-2012)

Art by Marie Lou Duret (tumblr, instagram, facebook)

Henriette bùi Quang Chiêu was the fist female physician in Vietnam.  Born into a prominent Vietnamese family, Henriette moved to Paris with her politician father as a teenager.  She enrolled in medical school at the University of Paris in 1927.  She graduated in 1934 and returned to Vietnam a year later.  In Vietnam, she worked as a physician at a maternity hospital.  Henriette faced massive discrimination as both a female physician  and as a non-white physician, but she was eventually appointed head of her department.

In 1957, Henriette moved to Japan to study acupuncture.  She returned to Vietnam for a year to share what she had learned before setting up a private practice in Paris.  Henriette returned to Vietnam to serve as a doctor during the war, but spent the last forty years of her life in Paris.  She died at the age of 105.