26. Lillie Langtry
Lillie Langtry was an actress on the London stage in the late 19th Century who took her work very seriously. Not many people took her seriously, believing that acting was a job beneath any well-bred woman. However, Langtry was considered so beautiful, and her looks captured the hearts of the future King Edward VII, who tried to seduce her into his bed-chamber. Although she became his mistress, that didn’t stop her from being a career woman: she opened up her own theater once she retired and ran her own stable for racing horses.