Born: 7 March 1775, France
Died: 14 June 1847
Country most active: France
Also known as: Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse
French balloonist and parachutist Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin was the first to ascend solo and the first woman to make a parachute descent – in a gondola – from an altitude of 900 metres (3,000 ft) on 12 October 1799. This was less than a year after her first flight on 10 November 1798, when she became one of the earliest women to take to the skies in a balloon. The year before, she had watched André-Jacques Garnerin’s first hydrogen balloon flight on 22 October 1797. Fascinated, she made his acquaintance and became his pupil, and later his wife and professional partner. Sometimes credited as the first woman to fly in a balloon, she was a few months behind Citoyenne Henri on 8 July 1798, and more than a decade after Élisabeth Thible made a free flight in 1784. The Garnerins performed many public demonstrations, including touring England in 1802, and one of her parachute descents was estimated at a height of 8,000 feet (2,438 m).