14 Of The Most Beautiful Women Of All Time

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, making any list of the most beautiful people in history up for serious debate. Many of these women became successful thanks to their looks, so if we've piqued your curiosity, check out which women we have selected!

No list would be complete without Marilyn Monroe, one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world. "Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring," she said, and she lived by those words.

Hedy Lamarr is one of the most fascinating women on this list. She holds a Guinness world record for being the first woman to be filmed doing particular activities, but her claim to fame is much more profound than that. After WWII broke out, she turned her mind to inventing "frequency hopping" to solve a problem of enemy vessels jamming the radio signals submarine use to control torpedos. Although she filed a patent that sat unused for years, it became the basis for many subsequent military inventions, as well as future civilian applications.

Ava Gardner's southern accent (she hailed from South Carolina) made her almost incomprehensible to MGM. That didn't stop her from banking on her beauty and they quickly signed her. It took five years for her to achieve a breakthrough with the film noir The Killers, which launched her to stardom. She was a leading Hollywood actress for five decades until the mid-'80s when her life-long smoking habit caught up with her. She developed emphysema and two strokes in 1986 left her paralyzed. She passed away from pneumonia in 1990.

Isabella Rossellini is the daughter of another woman on this list, Ingrid Bergman, from her marriage to Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini. In addition to her acting, she is known for her modeling work, although she began significantly older than usual in the industry. She eventually landed her a job as the spokesmodel of Lancôme, a job she held for 14 years. She has played in film and TV, including David Lynch's Blue Velvet. She is also known for her activism, specifically in conservation work.