Willard, Frances Elizabeth, 1839–98, American temperance leader and reformer, b. Churchville, N.Y., grad. Northwestern Female College, 1859. She was president of Evanston College for Ladies and dean of women at Northwestern Univ. After leaving the university, she helped organize (1874) the Womans Christian Temperance Union and in 1879 became its president. She devoted most of her life to the organization of women for the prohibition of alcoholic beverages but was active in other causes, especially that of woman suffrage.

See her autobiography, Glimpses of Fifty Years (1889) biographies by M. Earhart (1944) and M. L. Gates (1964).