She was born Emmeline Goulden in Manchester, England, in 1857 and married Richard Marsden Pankhurst, a barrister, in 1879. Mr Pankhurst was already a supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and had been the author of the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882. In 1889, Mrs Pankhurst founded the Women's Franchise League, but her campaign was not interrupted by her husband's death in 1898. In 1903 she founded the better-known Women's Social and Political Union, a militant movement whose members included the notorious Annie Kenney, the suffragette "martyr", Emily Davison and the composer, Dame Ethel Smyth. She was joined in the movement by her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, both of whom would make a substantial contribution to the campaign in different ways.
Mrs Pankhurst's tactics for drawing attention to the movement succeeded in getting her imprisoned several times, but, because of her high profile, she did not endure the same privations as many of her fellow suffragettes (though she did experience force-feeding after going on hunger strike). Her approach to the campaign did not endear her to everyone, and there were splits within the movement as a result. Her autobiography, My Own Story, was published in 1914. She died in 1928, having achieved the majority of her goals: the right to vote for women in the United Kingdom.