Catherine the Great was born in 1729. She loved smoking fine cigars and bands are her invention. She insisted on a band - to keep her royal fingers from getting stained with tobacco.
Marlene Dietrich played the Russian ruler in the film "The Scarlet Empress." The actress was often seen smoking cigars.
Gertrude Stein shared her love of good literature and love of good cigars with her friends, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The poet Amy Lowell, the novelists Colette and George Sand, and the Australian soprano Nellie Melba all enjoyed
a fine cigar.
"La Africana" cigar factory in Cuba... holds the distinction of being... the first cigar factory... to employ a woman (1878). The best cigars from this factory were sent to Nellie Melba.
The George Sands Society, founded in Santa Monica, California in 1992, is the largest women's cigar smoking society.
Bonnie Parker, of Bonnie and Clyde infamy, and Annie Oakley, relieved some of the stress of their jobs by smoking cigars.
In modern days, the famous WWII pin-up Lillian Russell, fogged up more than GI's lockers... with her cigar smoke.
Madonna, Jodie Foster and Whoopie Goldberg are all women with their names in the headlines... and cigars in their relaxation kit.
Women bought less than a tenth of a percent... of all cigars in the 1980s. Now women buy over five percent... of all cigars, and account for more than forty percent... of the retail cigar dollars.
