Eugenia Charles - Personal Life

Personal Life

Charles was born in the fishing village of Pointe Michel in Saint Luke parish, to a "coloured bourgeoise" family. She attended Convent School in Dominica, the island's only girls' secondary school, and became interested in law while working at the colonial magistrate's court. She worked for many years as assistant to Alastair Forbes. She attended university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, before moving to the United Kingdom to attend the London School of Economics. She was a member of the sorority Sigma Gamma Rho. She passed the bar and returned to Dominica, where she became the island's first female lawyer, establishing a practice specialising in property law.

Charles never married nor had children, which caused friction for her in the male-dominated sphere of Caribbean politics. In 1991 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

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