The thing about Fahrelnissa Zeid is that she is actually Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid and on top of her princessly duties, she was also the “first female modern Turkish painter.”

In this way she was much cooler than those dumbies Mia Thermopolis and Princess Buttercup, but still tied with Princess Leia. She was born in 1901 on the Turkish island, Büyükada into a prominent and very ~artsy~ Ottoman family. She was one of the first women to study at the Fine Arts Academy in Istanbul and had her first one woman show in 1944 in Istanbul. This lead her to more exhibitions in Europe and the U.S. and from there, stardom! She exhibited with Group D, a Turkish avant-garde movement and afterwards with Nouvelle Ecole de Paris. She officially became the most expensive Middle-Eastern female artist in 2013 when one of her paintings sold for $2.7 million. And word on the street is that in 2017 she’ll have an exhibition at the Tate. Long live the princess’ artistic legacy!

Her career was not at the expense of a family however. This is actually how she became a princess in the first place. She married novelist, Izzet Melih Devrim first and they had three kids. This marriage did not make her royalty but then after her first husband died, she married Prince Zeid bin Hussein, “the ambassador of Iraq to Ankara and the brother of King Faisal I” and became a princess. She had one son with the prince, Prince Ra'ad bin Zeid, who is definitely the favorite of you read her New York Times obituary.