Louise Charlin Perrin Labé (c. 1522 – 25 April 1566), also identified as La Belle Cordière ("The Fair Ropemaker") after her father's job, was a French Renaissance poet from Lyon.

Her father, Pierre Charly, was a successful ropemaker, who started a business on rue de l'Arbre sec, at the base of Saint Sébastien Hill in Lyon.

At some point, perhaps in a convent school, Labé received an education in foreign languages (Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish) and music, specifically the lute.

Her early biographers called her "la belle Amazone" and report that she dressed in male clothing and fought as a knight on horseback in the ranks of the Dauphin (afterwards Henry II) at the siege of Perpignan.

Her Œuvres include two prose works: a feminist preface, urging women to write, that is dedicated to a young noblewoman of Lyon, Clémence de Bourges; and a dramatic allegory in prose entitled Débat de Folie et d'Amour (translated into English by Robert Greene in 1608),[1] which belongs to a long tradition with examples from antiquity through to the Middle Ages, a tradition that had gained contemporary prominence due to the controversial satire, Erasmus' Praise of Folly.

Modern critics cite her rejection of the more showy or extravagant metaphors and poetic effects employed by poets such as Scève or Pernette du Guillet as one of the key components of her originality and appeal for the modern reader, with Jerry C. Nash writing in 1980 "Labé's lyrical voice is truly one of the best expressions in literature of artful simplicity, of a consistent and masterly synthesis of substance and form, of passion and poetry".

The sonnets have been her most famous works following the early modern period, and were translated into German by Rainer Maria Rilke and into Dutch by Pieter Cornelis Boutens.

[5] Numerous critics and scholars examined Huchon's essay and frequently found her reasoning absurd, judging that her interpretation of the biographical evidence seemed to show inexplicable bias and reliance on unfounded assumptions.

The lack of any evidence in support of her thesis was a further reason for the ease with which many dismissed her ideas as mistaken and considered Huchon's work to have made no valuable contribution to scholarship.

The list of eminent scholars opposing Huchon include Emmanuel Buron, Henri Hours, Bernard Plessy, Madeleine Lazard, Daniel Martin, Eliane Viennot, and many others.