“Genius” is a masculine noun, but it’s not for nothing that Sophocles said: “As soon as you put a woman on an equal footing with a man, she begins to surpass him.” However, there have always been women who did not wait for circumstances to make them equal to men; they themselves challenged society, established rules of behavior and, thanks to their independence, strong will and innovative thinking, achieved amazing results. These are Cleopatra, Marquise de Pompadour, Catherine II, Elena Blavatsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, Coco Chanel, Marilyn Monroe, Margaret Thatcher and other outstanding women who will be discussed in this book. Their destinies are different, their motivations are contradictory, their personalities are dual, complex and multifaceted, but they all have traits characteristic of successful women. The author, analyzing their life paths, shows how their talents were born and formed, how, having achieved recognition of humanity, often starting from scratch, they could not do only one thing - to confirm the words of Charles Baudelaire: “A woman is an invitation to happiness.”