Marguerite Alice "Missy" LeHand (September 13, 1896 – July 31, 1944) was a private secretary to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) for 21 years.

According to LeHand's biographer Kathryn Smith in The Gatekeeper, she eventually functioned as White House Chief of Staff, the first woman in American history to do so.

Following the Democrats' defeat, FDR's wife, Eleanor, invited her to join the family at their home in Hyde Park, New York, to clean up the campaign correspondence.

[6] When she was a young child, the family relocated to Somerville, a working class suburb of Boston, where LeHand was struck by rheumatic fever at age fifteen.

[10] After holding a variety of clerical positions in the Boston area and passing the Civil Service exam, she moved to Washington, D.C. in 1917, to briefly serve as a clerk at the Department of the Navy during World War I.

Roosevelt biographer Jean Edward Smith described the young LeHand as "five feet, seven inches tall ... warm and attractive, with ink-blue eyes, black hair already turning gray, and an engaging throaty voice.

[15] In the summer of 1921, Roosevelt was struck by a disabling paralytic illness (diagnosed at the time as polio), leaving him paralyzed below the waist; LeHand soon became his inseparable companion.

[24] By the time he was elected and assumed office, however, she was well enough to resume work and moved into the second floor of the Governor's Mansion in Albany, continuing on as his secretary.

[14] With Eleanor often away working in New York City during this time (she was part owner of an elite girls' school), LeHand was FDR's day-to-day companion and the back-up hostess at the Governor's Mansion.

[15] Eleanor Roosevelt disapproved of alcohol, and Missy served as hostess at FDR's daily cocktail time, which he later dubbed "the Children's Hour.

LeHand accompanied the Roosevelts to the White House, where she became the first woman to serve as a presidential secretary and the only female member of the four-person "secretariat" that managed the West Wing.

She met with the other members of the secretariat around FDR's bedside every morning, vetted his mail, provided a "back door" entrance to the Oval Office—which adjoined hers alone—and spent many evenings with the president in his upstairs study as well as accompanied him on weekend cruises on the presidential yachts: the Sequoia and its successor the Potomac.

Because FDR could not be awakened after he went to bed at night without LeHand's permission, she was the first person to learn by telephone that Hitler had invaded Poland in September 1939, setting off World War II.

The question of whether LeHand and Roosevelt's relationship contained a sexual component was widely discussed among their contemporaries and continues to be debated by historians.

[35] Roosevelt biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin states that "beneath the complexity, it is absolutely clear that Franklin was the love of Missy's life, and that he adored her and depended on her for affection and support as well as work.

"[34] His eldest brother Jimmy disagreed, arguing that FDR's illness had made sexual function too difficult for him to have a physical affair.

Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook describes the First Lady as treating LeHand warmly, "as an elder daughter or, in the manner of Asian matriarchs, as the junior wife".

Miller later told biographer Joseph Lash that he had begun the affair out of respect for Eleanor, feeling that she was hurt by LeHand's relationship with Franklin.

In June 1941, LeHand collapsed at a White House dinner party, and two weeks later, she suffered a major stroke that left her partially paralyzed with little speech function.

[44] Goodwin says a factor that may have led to her illness was stress stemming from fears that the exiled Crown Princess Märtha of Norway, a Washington-area resident during World War II, had replaced her as FDR's favorite companion, occupying the seat next to him that had long been LeHand's in automobile rides.

[45] Kathryn Smith cites the stress of the world crisis that spring, as Britain stood alone against the Nazis, and the ill health of FDR, who had expected her to be at his bedside for weeks on end.

[46] She also became critical of FDR's leadership for the first time that spring, sharing her disappointment with Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes, a close friend.

[48][51] After Missy departed the White House, she never saw FDR again, but he did keep in touch by writing letters, making phone calls, and sending gifts.

[55] In March 1945, the United States Maritime Commission christened the SS Marguerite LeHand, an 18,000 ton C3 cargo vessel, in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

[58] Priscilla Pointer played the role of LeHand in the 1977 ABC television production Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years.