Raymonde de Laroche in a knitted hat and sweater at the wheel of a Voisin biplane in late 1909

Raymonde de Laroche: The World’s First Licensed Woman Pilot

by Tamika Johnson | Oct 20, 2026 | Mondo dell'aviazione, Storia e leggende | 0 comments

On 22 October 1909, on the army parade ground at Châlons in eastern France, a woman climbed alone into a Voisin biplane. The machine had only one seat, so there was no room for an instructor. She taxied, opened the throttle, lifted off and flew about 300 yards before settling back onto the grass.

Her name was Élisa Deroche, but Paris knew her by her stage name, Raymonde de Laroche. On 8 March 1910 the Aéro-Club de France made her pilot No. 36, and she became the first woman in the world to hold a pilot's licence.

That date is why aviation now marks the week of 8 March with Women of Aviation Worldwide Week. The woman behind it survived a crash into a row of poplars, a near-fatal fall at Reims and a car crash that killed the aircraft builder Charles Voisin. She died at 36, on an airfield at Le Crotoy, still chasing another first.

Informazioni rapide

Nato: Élisa Léontine Deroche, 22 August 1882, Paris
Known as: Raymonde de Laroche, the “Baroness” de Laroche
First solo: 22 October 1909, Châlons, in a Voisin biplane
Pilot licence: Aéro-Club de France No. 36, 8 March 1910, the first issued to a woman
Coupe Femina: Won 25 November 1913 with a non-stop flight of over four hours
Morto: 18 July 1919, Le Crotoy, aged 36

From the Stage to the Parade Ground

Élisa Léontine Deroche was born on 22 August 1882 at 61 rue de la Verrerie, in the Marais district of Paris. As a girl she rode, played tennis, rowed, skated and cycled. By 1902 she was riding a Werner motorcycle and had a driving licence.

Then came the theatre. In December 1903 she played Doña Sérafine in Victorien Sardou's La Sorcière at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, and she worked the Paris stage for several seasons under the name Raymonde de Laroche. Aviation caught her early: she was at Bagatelle in 1906 when Alberto Santos-Dumont flew, and she watched Wilbur Wright's demonstrations in France in 1908. The sculptor-turned-aviator Léon Delagrange, with whom she had a relationship, encouraged her to fly herself.

In 1909 she picked the Voisin biplane for its stability and went to Charles Voisin, who with his brother Gabriel built the machines. Her training ran at the Camp de Châlons near Mourmelon under the Voisin instructor Édouard Chateau. Because the aircraft seated one, lessons meant taxiing runs and instructions called from the ground.

Later retellings turned her first flight into an act of defiance, with Voisin forbidding her to leave the ground and his pupil taking off anyway. The contemporary record is calmer. Volo magazine reported that she had been taking lessons for some time before she was allowed to take the wheel.

Forgotten Aviation's documentary traces the life of Raymonde de Laroche, from the Paris stage to licence No. 36 and her death at Le Crotoy.

The Baroness Who Was Never a Baroness

Volo covered her first hop in its issue of 30 October 1909. The next day, the magazine added, she circled the parade ground twice, about four miles in a gusty wind, and said afterwards that she had the machine completely under control.

The same report gave her a title that would follow her for the rest of her life.

“Baroness La Roche has been successfully piloting a Voisin biplane, and has thereby earned the right to be known as the first lady flyer or ‘aviatress.’”

Volo — weekly magazine of the Royal Aero Club, 30 October 1909

She was not of noble birth. English-language histories say Volo invented the title and she simply never corrected it. French sources tell it differently: she had already adopted “baronne Raymonde de Laroche” as a stage name, in memory of her baby daughter Raymonde, who died in 1902 aged seven and a half months.

Either way, the title stuck. When she flew at St Petersburg in May 1910 she was presented again as the Baroness, and accounts say Tsar Nicholas II congratulated her in person. After that, nobody seriously questioned it.

Licence No. 36

Flying in 1909 was dangerous, and she found that out quickly. On 4 January 1910, practising for her licence tests at Bouy near Mourmelon, she swung too wide on her second circuit, could not climb in time and hit the poplars lining the road. She was knocked unconscious and suffered a concussion and a broken collarbone. On the same day Delagrange was killed in a crash at La Croix-d'Hins, near Bordeaux.

Within weeks she was flying again, this time in Egypt with the Voisin team at the Heliopolis meeting of 6 to 13 February 1910. French accounts say she completed her licence tests there. The Aéro-Club de France approved them and dated her brevet 8 March 1910: certificate No. 36, naming Mme de Laroche a pilote-aviateur.

Aéro-Club de France pilot certificate No. 36 issued to Mme de Laroche on 8 March 1910, with her photograph in a white roll-neck sweater — Licence No. 36: the Aéro-Club de France certificate dated 8 March 1910 that made de Laroche the world's first licensed woman pilot. Photo: Fédération Aéronautique Internationale via Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Was she the first woman to fly? That is harder to answer. Thérèse Peltier went up with Delagrange in 1908, and some French accounts credit her with a short flight of her own that September. The licence, though, is not in dispute. It is a dated document with a number, and no woman held one before her.

Others followed. Harriet Quimby became the first American woman to earn a pilot's licence in 1911, and a decade later Bessie Coleman had to travel to France to find a school that would teach her.

HistoryPod's short film on 8 March 1910, the day the Aéro-Club de France licensed Raymonde de Laroche.

A Tsar, a Gust at Rouen and a Fall at Reims

The licence turned her into a touring attraction. In 1910 she flew at Heliopolis, at Tours from 30 April to 5 May, and at St Petersburg from 8 to 15 May, where she cut her engine at about 100 metres and glided down to land. Budapest followed in June, then the Rouen meeting from 19 to 26 June.

At Rouen a gust almost rolled her biplane over at more than 20 metres. She levelled it and landed, and the reporter from La Presse found her back in the hangar, next to a torn wing, calmly powdering her pink cheeks.

“That way I will look much more suited to the occasion. An aviator who has just had a fall, to be interesting, must look slightly pale and shaken... All the more so an aviatrix!”

Raymonde de Laroche — to La Presse after her near-accident at Rouen, June 1910 (translated from the French)

The luck ran out at the second Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne at Reims. On 8 July 1910 her Voisin, race number 59, fell from about 50 metres after two circuits. Several accounts blame the wake of another aircraft. She was pulled from the wreckage unconscious.

Le Petit Journal listed fractures of the right leg, the left arm and the left leg, and a dislocated right hip. She left Dr Roussel's clinic in Reims on 7 October 1910, and it would be close to two years before she was fit to fly again.

Period French postcard showing a Voisin biplane over the field at Bétheny with an inset portrait of Madame de Laroche and a caption about her 50-metre fall — A period postcard of the Reims meeting at Bétheny: “After flying two circuits, to the cheers of the spectators, Madame De Laroche falls from a height of 50 metres.” Photo: postcard via Harvard Library / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Car Crash, Coupe Femina and the War

Recovery did not end the danger. On 26 September 1912 she and Charles Voisin were in a car crash. Voisin was killed, and she was badly injured once again.

She came back again. On 25 November 1913 she won the Aéro-Club de France's Coupe Femina, a prize for women pilots, with a non-stop flight of more than four hours.

When war came in 1914, she was not allowed to fly for France; flying was considered too dangerous for women. She served as a military driver instead, carrying officers from the rear areas to the front, often under fire.

1919: Altitude Records and Le Crotoy

Peace put her back in the air. In June 1919 she set women's altitude records, the best usually given as about 4,800 metres, or 15,700 feet. The figures vary between sources, and the FAI did not formally recognise women's records until 1929. French press accounts describe a duel with the American Ruth Law, whose 4,720 metres she beat. She also set a women's distance mark of 323 km.

Raymonde de Laroche in a long coat and flying helmet standing in front of the propeller of a Farman biplane on an airfield in 1919 — De Laroche in front of a Farman biplane in 1919, the year of her altitude and distance records. Photo: Agence Meurisse / Bibliothèque nationale de France / Public domain

Her next goal was another first: to become the first woman test pilot. On 18 July 1919 she was at the airfield at Le Crotoy, on the Somme estuary, flying as co-pilot in an experimental aircraft, described in one account as a civil variant of the Caudron G.3. On the landing approach the aircraft dived into the ground.

She was killed outright. The pilot, Barrault, died shortly afterwards. Volo carried the news.

“What happened is not very clear, but it would seem that the machine in which she was flying overturned during a trial flight.”

Volo — notice on the death of the “Baroness de la Roche”, July 1919

Élisa Deroche was 36. She is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Why 8 March Matters

Her monuments are scattered but real. A statue stands at Paris-Le Bourget airport. La Poste issued a stamp with her portrait on 18 October 2010, and there are streets named after her at Paris-Orly and at Mirabel airport in Quebec.

Her biggest memorial is a date. In the week of 6 to 12 March 2010, marking the licence centenary, women pilots in eight countries introduced 310 women and girls to flying. That became Women of Aviation Worldwide Week, held every year in the week that includes 8 March. The next one runs from 8 to 14 March 2027.

A short archive clip of “Baroness” Raymonde de Laroche, posted by an early-aviation archive channel.

Raymonde de Laroche flew for less than ten years. She survived three serious accidents and lost two friends who were aviators along the way. Licence No. 36 is a small card with a photograph and a signature, and it was the first proof on paper that women could hold a pilot's licence too.

Sources: Wikipedia (Raymonde de Laroche; Élisa Deroche, French edition), National Air and Space Museum (Roger B. Whitman Early Aviation Photograph Collection), RetroNews / Bibliothèque nationale de France, Flight (30 October 1909 and July 1919), This Day in Aviation, The Engines of Our Ingenuity (University of Houston), Historic Wings, SP's Aviation, National Geographic, SFO Museum, Women of Aviation Worldwide Week

Domande frequenti

Who was Raymonde de Laroche?

Raymonde de Laroche was the stage name of Élisa Deroche (1882–1919), a French actress turned aviator. She made her first solo flight in a Voisin biplane at Châlons on 22 October 1909, and on 8 March 1910 the Aéro-Club de France issued her licence No. 36, making her the first woman in the world to hold a pilot's licence.

When did Raymonde de Laroche get her pilot's licence?

Raymonde de Laroche received Aéro-Club de France pilot licence No. 36 on 8 March 1910, the first pilot's licence issued to a woman anywhere. French sources say she completed the licence tests during the Heliopolis air meeting in Egypt in February 1910, and the Aéro-Club then approved them and dated her certificate 8 March.

Was Raymonde de Laroche really a baroness?

No. Raymonde de Laroche was not of noble birth. Flight magazine called her Baroness in its report of 30 October 1909 and she did not correct it, while French sources say she had already used baronne Raymonde de Laroche as a stage name. The title stuck after she was presented as the Baroness in St Petersburg in 1910.

What aircraft did Raymonde de Laroche learn to fly on?

Raymonde de Laroche learned to fly on a single-seat Voisin biplane at the Camp de Châlons near Mourmelon, trained by the Voisin instructor Édouard Chateau. Because the aircraft had only one seat, instruction was given from the ground. Her first flight, on 22 October 1909, covered about 300 yards.

How did Raymonde de Laroche die?

Raymonde de Laroche died on 18 July 1919 at the airfield at Le Crotoy in northern France, aged 36. She was flying as co-pilot in an experimental aircraft, hoping to become the first woman test pilot, when it dived into the ground on the landing approach. She was killed outright and the pilot, Barrault, died shortly afterwards.

What altitude record did Raymonde de Laroche set?

In June 1919 Raymonde de Laroche set women's altitude records, the best usually given as about 4,800 metres, or 15,700 feet, plus a women's distance mark of 323 km. Figures vary between sources, and the FAI did not formally recognise women's records until 1929, so these were records as reported at the time.

Why is Women of Aviation Worldwide Week held in March?

Women of Aviation Worldwide Week is held every year in the week that includes 8 March, the anniversary of the day in 1910 when Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's licence. It grew out of the 2010 centenary, when women pilots in eight countries introduced 310 women and girls to flying in one week.