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.
