Marie Félicie Élisabeth Marvingt was born at 6:30 p.m on 20 February 1875, in Aurillac, the prefecture of the French department of Cantal.

When Marie's mother died in 1889, the fourteen-year-old found herself in charge of the household, and the family moved to Nancy, where she remained for the rest of her life.

She grew to also enjoy many other sports: mountaineering, riflery, gymnastics, horseriding, fencing, tennis, skiing, luging, ice skating, boxing, martial arts, golf, hockey, and football.

Marvingt became a world-class athlete who won numerous prizes in swimming, fencing, riflery, shooting, skiing, speed skating, luge and bobsledding.

She was also a skilled mountaineer and between 1903 and 1910 she became the first woman to climb most of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps including[2] the Aiguille des Grands Charmoz and the Grépon Pass from Chamonix in a single day.

[9] On 18 July 1914, competing in the 10th Grand Prix of the French Air Club, she became the first woman to cross the English Channel in a balloon.

On 27 November 1910, Marie Marvingt set the world's first aviation records for women in time aloft and distance flown.

Marie insisted that this flight be officially timed, measured, and verified—first, to establish the need to include women in the record books and, second, because she was competing for the Femina Cup.

Although Marie made another flight bettering her own record, on 21 December 1910, Hélène Dutrieu, cycling champion and fourth woman in the world to obtain a pilot's license, flew even farther.

Marie made a last attempt to win the Cup on 30 December 1910 but mechanical failure forced her to land short of her goal.

[18] With the help of Deperdussin company engineer Louis Béchereau (who also designed the SPAD fighter), she drew up the first prototype for the first practical air ambulance.

Marvingt devoted the remainder of her long life to the concept of aeromedical evacuation, giving more than 3,000 conferences and seminars on the subject on at least four continents.

While organizing "L'Aviation Sanitaire," recruiting women pilots and nurses, she made several visits to the United States to confer with government officials.

[20][better source needed] On 30 January 1955, she received the Deutsch de la Meurthe grand prize from the Fédération Nationale d'Aéronautique (French National Federation of Aeronautics) at the Sorbonne for her work in aviation medicine.

She also served as a Red Cross surgical nurse,[21] as a war correspondent on the Italian front, and as a probable gatherer of information for military authorities.

[7] In World War II, she resumed work as a Red Cross nurse with the rank of corporal, she continued her promotion of the ambulance-airplane, and she founded and maintained a home for wounded aviators.

Marie Marvingt died on 14 December 1963, aged 88, in Laxou,[24] a small commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in northeastern France.

As a working journalist all her life, most of Marvingt's nonfiction writing consists of the numerous newspaper articles she wrote, sometimes under her pseudonym "Myriel."