María Eva Duarte de Perón

María Eva Duarte (7 May 1919 - 26 July 1952), better known as María Eva Duarte de Perón, Eva Perón and Evita, was the wife of Argentine President Juan Perón (1895-1974) and First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She was born in poverty in the rural village of Los Toldos, in the Pampas, as the youngest of five children. In 1934 at the age of 15, she moved to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a stage, radio, and film actress. She met Colonel Juan Perón on 22 January 1944 during a charity event at the Luna Park Stadium to benefit the victims of an earthquake in San Juan, Argentina. The two were married the following year. Juan Perón was elected President of Argentina in 1946; during the next six years, Eva Perón became powerful within the pro-Peronist trade unions, primarily for speaking on behalf of labor rights. She also ran the Ministries of Labor and Health, founded and ran the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, championed women's suffrage in Argentina, and founded and ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Women's Peronist Party.