When you think of infamous women, you might picture scandal, intrigue, and daring choices. Here is a list of ten truly fascinating women, each of whom at some point traded intimacy for money, leaving a legacy that still sparks conversation.
Infamous Women of Pleasure
10 La Cicciolina
Anna Ilona Staller, better known as La Cicciolina (born 1951), began her porn career in the early 1970s and didn’t go full‑hardcore until 1983. In a move that shocked both the entertainment world and the political arena, she won a seat in the Italian parliament in 1987 as a member of the Radical Party. While serving until 1991, she kept filming adult movies and even offered to sleep with Saddam Hussein to secure the release of hostages, later extending a similar proposal to Osama Bin Laden. Neither leader accepted, but her audacious blend of sexuality and politics cemented her place in history.
9 Laura Bell
Laura Bell (1829‑1894) rose to fame in Dublin’s high‑class prostitution circles thanks to her striking beauty, wit, and intelligence. She later moved to London, where she rode a gilded carriage through Hyde Park and entertained dukes and nobles. At twenty‑one, Nepal’s Prince Jung Bahadur Rana fell head over heels for her, showering her with gifts worth £250,000 over ninety days before returning home.
In 1853 she married Captain August Frederick Thistlethwayte, and during the marriage experienced a profound religious conversion, swapping the title “Queen of London Whoredom” for that of evangelical preacher. She hosted sophisticated tea parties aimed at spreading Christian teachings. After her husband’s accidental death in 1887, she befriended Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, maintaining the friendship until her own death in 1894.
8 Saint Mary of Egypt
Mary of Egypt (c. 344‑421) entered the world of prostitution in Alexandria at the tender age of twelve. She claimed an insatiable appetite for sexual pleasure, living a life of extreme poverty despite her earnings.
After seventeen years on the streets, she learned of a massive pilgrim gathering in Jerusalem for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Sensing a lucrative opportunity, she paid for food and passage to the holy city, hoping to attract customers. Yet upon arrival, a sudden spiritual awakening led her to renounce her former life. The Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to her, directing her to the River Jordan, where she crossed and fled into the desert.
For forty‑eight years Mary dwelled as a hermit, surviving on prayer and occasional visions. A priest named Zosimus eventually found her—skin blackened, naked, and delirious from isolation. After a chase, she relented and recounted her harrowing tale. She died a few years later, now venerated as Saint Mary of Egypt, patron saint of penitence.
7 Mata Hari
Margaretha Zelle (1876‑1917), later known as Mata Hari, married a man 22 years her senior at eighteen. The marriage quickly deteriorated into abuse, infidelity, and alcoholism, and her two children later suffered from syphilis, with the elder son dying from the disease.
After separating in 1902, her ex‑husband’s slander caused her to lose custody of her daughter and leave her penniless. Desperate, she briefly turned to prostitution to fund a move to Paris, where she reinvented herself as an exotic dancer. Her performances, often barely covered by a gilded bra, attracted aristocrats from across Europe.
When dancing opportunities waned, she became a high‑class courtesan, earning top rates in Europe. In 1917, amid World War I, she was accused of espionage, tried, and executed by firing squad. Though her guilt remains debated, her legend as a seductive spy endures.
6 Yu Xuanji
Yu Xuanji (c. 844‑868) grew up in the Tang capital Chang’an and entered the city’s Pleasure District as a teenager. A gifted poet, she composed around fifty verses that survive today, though a published collection of hers has long vanished.
At sixteen she became the concubine of Censor Li Yi, only to be abandoned by his jealous wife. After wandering the south and returning penniless to Chang’an, she resumed work as a courtesan before entering the Xianyi Convent, training as a Taoist priestess—a role that still involved entertaining male patrons.
While at the convent, she allegedly discovered a maidservant’s affair with her lover, leading her to murder the maid in a fit of rage and bury the body in a garden. The foul odor revealed the crime, and Yu Xuanji was arrested, tried for murder, and beheaded. Some scholars suspect the accusation was fabricated, but she died at roughly twenty‑eight.
5 Sally Salisbury
Sarah Priddon (c. 1692‑1724), later known as Sally Salisbury, began her working life as a seamstress apprentice. After a punitive whipping by her father, she fled home and turned to prostitution in St Giles, London.
By fourteen she was celebrated for her wit and beauty, attracting wealthy clients. A volatile temper and mounting debts led to frequent imprisonments. In 1723, during a dispute with a customer named John Finch, she stabbed him in the chest with a bread knife. Though Finch forgave her, she was sentenced to a year in Newgate Prison for violent assault.
While incarcerated, she fell ill—likely syphilis—and died a few months before her scheduled release, described by contemporary journalists as succumbing to “brain fever brought on by debauch.”
4 Barbara Payton
Barbara Payton (1927‑1967) burst onto Hollywood in 1949, quickly becoming a platinum‑blonde siren. By the mid‑1950s she earned $10,000 a week and starred in films such as Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.
Her career unraveled amid a series of tumultuous affairs with married men, heavy drinking, and reckless partying. A violent four‑year relationship with actor Tom Neil—who once assaulted a lover of Payton’s—ended with Neil’s imprisonment for shooting his third wife.
Payton’s later years were marked by arrests for prostitution, public drunkenness, petty theft, and drug use. She lived in squalid apartments, sold herself for five dollars a trick on Sunset Boulevard, and suffered weight gain, injuries, and tooth loss from constant beatings. Declining a rehab offer, she reportedly said, “I would rather drink and die.” She died of heart and liver failure at her parents’ home in 1967.
3 Sada Abe
Sada Abe (1905‑?) was born into an upper‑middle‑class Tokyo family. After being raped at fifteen, she was sold to a geisha house at seventeen, where she performed low‑class services for five years before becoming a licensed prostitute.
Following several affairs, she met Kichizo Ishida, a married man who fulfilled her sexual desires. When she realized he would always belong to another woman, she strangled him on 18 May 1936, carved her name onto his arm, and removed his genitals, placing them in her handbag. Over the next three days she engaged in necrophilia with the corpse.
Arrested shortly thereafter, Abe claimed she kept the organ because it reminded her most vividly of their time together. She served five years for second‑degree murder and corpse mutilation, then vanished from the public record.
2 Theodora
Theodora (c. 500‑548) began her life as a child prostitute in a Constantinople brothel, serving low‑class clients. By fourteen she was performing in the hippodrome, where she combined erotic acts with post‑show sexual services.
At twenty she experienced a dramatic conversion to Miaphysite Christianity after an abusive lover abandoned her. Embracing wool‑spinning, she caught the eye of Justinian, heir to the Byzantine throne. They married in 525, and two years later Justinian became emperor, making Theodora empress.
As empress, she enacted progressive reforms: imposing the death penalty for rape, granting women rights to initiate divorce, own property, abolishing sex slavery, and establishing convents for former prostitutes. Yet contemporary historians like Procopius portrayed her as ruthless, accusing her of torture, poisoning, and demonic behavior. She died at forty‑nine, likely from cancer.
1 Ching Shih
Born around 1775, Ching Shih worked as a brothel slave on a Cantonese pleasure boat until 1801, when she was captured by pirate admiral Zheng Yi. Captivated by her height and beauty, Zheng Yi married her on the condition that she receive half of his profits and command a fleet.
The couple quickly built the Red Flag Fleet, which within three years boasted over 1,500 ships, making it one of China’s most powerful pirate forces. After Zheng Yi’s death in 1807, Ching Shih assumed command, imposing strict codes and exacting swift retribution on anyone who defied her.
She successfully resisted attacks from Chinese, British, and Portuguese navies. In 1810, the Chinese government offered amnesty; she accepted on the condition she could retain her loot. Retiring at thirty‑four, she opened a combined gambling house and brothel, living to the age of sixty‑nine.