Begum Khaleda Zia was a Bangladeshi politician who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh from 1991 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2006. She was the first female prime minister of Bangladesh and the second female prime minister in the Muslim world after Benazir Bhutto. She was the wife of the former president of Bangladesh and army commander, Ziaur Rahman. She was the longest serving chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) from 1984 until 2025.
Zia was born into a Bengali Muslim family in 1946 in Jalpaiguri and moved to East Bengal, present-day Bangladesh, in 1950. During the Liberation War of Bangladesh, after her husband joined the Mukti Bahini, she, along with her sons, was detained by the Pakistani Forces.