Charles, (Mary) Eugenia (1919–2005)

Dominican centre-right politician, prime minister 1980–95; cofounder and first leader of the cente-right Dominica Freedom Party (DFP). Two years after Dominica's independence the DFP won the 1980 general election and Charles became the Caribbean's first female prime minister. In 1993 she resigned the leadership of the DFP, but remained as prime minister until the 1995 elections, which were won by the opposition United Workers' Party (UNP). She then announced her retirement from politics.

As leader of the DFP, and as a member of parliament from 1975, she campaigned against the authoritarian government of Patrick John. This culminated in the ousting of John in February 1980, after strikes and demonstrations, and a landslide victory for the DFP the following July. In 1981 she survived two coup plots by supporters of John. She embarked on a free-market economic strategy, promoted land reform, and supported the USA in its anti-communist Caribbean policy. She also, unusually for the leader of a Caribbean Commonwealth country, developed closer links with France.

Her DFP government was re-elected in 1985 and, by a narrow margin, in 1990. After her retirement as DFP leader in 1993, she was replaced by the foreign affairs minister Brian Alleyne, and, at the age of 76, did not contest the 1995 election, which was won by the UNP led by Edison James.

She was born in Pointe Michel, Dominica, and educated in the UK, where she qualified as a barrister. She returned to practise in the Windward and Leeward Islands in the West Indies and did not begin her active political career until relatively late in life, in 1968. Her backing for US intervention in Grenada in 1983 earned her the sobriquet of ‘the Iron Lady of the Caribbean’.