Music emerged very early on as a leisure activity in which women were well represented. Yet few of them were able, at least until the 19th century, to pursue a career as full-fledged composers—a field that was almost exclusively male. Indeed, it was often because they established themselves as virtuoso performers that they were able to compose and have their own works performed. This was the case with Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, a talented harpsichordist noticed by Madame de Montespan, who published her first collection of harpsichord pieces as early as 1687 and played a pivotal role in popularizing the sonata genre in France. This was also the case for Mademoiselle Duval, a chorister at the Royal Academy of Music, who succeeded in having Les Génies, an opera-ballet of her own composition, performed there as early as 1736. Finally, this is the case of Anna Bon, trained at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice by Antonio Vivaldi, who became a virtuoso performer at the court of the Margrave of Bayreuth, to whom she dedicated her Flute Sonatas. Their works naturally follow in the footsteps of contemporary composers or their illustrious predecessors, such as Marin Marais, at a time when European music drew inspiration from national traditions infused with the aesthetic of the great Italian masters. These female composers are essential to understanding the full richness of European musical creation over the past three centuries.