Ada Rehan (born Bidelia Crehan; June 12, 1857 – January 8, 1916) was an American actress and comedian who typified the "personality" style of acting in the nineteenth century.

[3] Her first performance was in Newark, New Jersey, in a play called Across the Continent, written by her brother-in-law, in which she filled in for an actress in a minor role who was sick and unable to go on.

It was in her next performance, with Mrs. John Drew's Arch Street Theatre of Philadelphia, that she was miscalled as Ada C. Rehan and the name stuck.

[5] Rehan would continue to work with Daly until his death twenty years later, but their relationship, though marked by enormous professional success for both, was a turbulent one.

"[6] While finding much success in "breeches roles", for her audiences in America and abroad she came to embody an ideal of femininity that was desirable, respectable, and aspirational.

In his biography of her, one of Rehan's contemporaries, William Winter wrote "Each part that she has undertaken has been permeated with something of herself...Her soul is given to her profession, and the nature of the woman herself is discerned in that of the character that she represents.

Cornelia Otis Skinner writes of their relationship that "besides being leading lady, [she] enjoyed the offstage role of grand maitresse...To hold the whip handle by keeping a woman of her beauty and prominence in the compromising position and extra-marital liaison involved in those cautious times was a sop to his will to power.

George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, and Oscar Wilde (who wrote the part of Mrs. Erlynne in Lady Windermere's Fan with her in mind)[10] were among her many admirers.

The Chicago Evening Mail reported on the fad of women impersonating Rehan's speech, ladies' hats were named for her, and dressmakers offered her costumes for free in order to get their designs in front of the public.

[12] Ada Rehan was widely admired in both America and Europe, having acted in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Stratford-on-Avon.

[17] Rehan was the model for a solid silver statue of Justice that was presented as part of the State of Montana's mining exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.