Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. July 4, 1844 – September 17, 1907) was an American sculptor who worked for most of her career in Rome, Italy. She is the first woman of African-American and Native American heritage to achieve international fame and recognition as a sculptor in the fine arts world. Her work is known for incorporating themes relating to black and American Indian people into Neoclassical style sculpture. She emerged during the crisis-filled days of the Civil War, and by the end of the 19th century, she was the only black woman who had participated in and been recognized to any degree by the American artistic mainstream. In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Edmonia Lewis on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
For years, the year of Edmonia Lewis's death was speculated to be 1911 in Rome. An alternative view held that she died in Marin County, California, and was buried in an unmarked grave in San Francisco. Recent scholarship has found that she lived in the Hammersmith area of London, England, before her death on September 17, 1907, in the Hammersmith Borough Infirmary. According to her death certificate, the cause of her death was chronic Bright's disease. According to parish records she is buried in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, in London.
