Dr. Esther Romania Bunnell Pratt Penrose (August 8, 1839 – November 9, 1932) was a leading figure in Latter-day Saint (LDS) and Utah culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

From the ages of ten to sixteen, Romania attended the Quaker-sponsored Western Agricultural School in Ohio and then the Female Seminary in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

[1] Because of concerns regarding non-Mormon influences on her children, specifically that Romania would perhaps marry an admirer of another faith, her mother sold their home in Crawfordsville and moved her family to Utah.

Then shortly after her mother's return the family relocated from Salt Lake City to Provo, Utah during the evacuation caused by the approach of Johnston's Army.

[6] Prior to going to medical school in Philadelphia, Romania spent time in New York assisting her husband in editing his father, Parley P. Pratt's, autobiography.

With the understanding that there was a great need for more skilled doctors in Utah, she wanted to make a difference and help relieve suffering and pain whenever possible.

[6] Romania showed great promise in her classes at the Women's Medical College in New York City during her first semester of observations, but she still felt that she was already lagging behind her classmates.

[6] While in school, Romania studied many different medical topics: surgery, diseases of women, anatomy, chemistry, toxicology, microscopy, obstetrics, etc.

Early in her college years she found great interest in learning about the eye and ear, but could not yet choose a specialized field.

Before returning home after graduation, Dr. Pratt stayed in Boston but now turned her focus to studies of the eye, ear, nose, and throat.

Romania continued to seek knowledge and occasionally would return to the east in order to attend lectures at the Eye and Ear Infirmary in New York.

In 1882 the Relief Society came into possession of an abandoned medical facility, and with donations to fund their work, were able to open the Deseret Hospital in Salt Lake City.

Before the hospital was closed, she was on its board along with such other leading Mormon women as Phebe C. Woodruff, Ellis Shipp, Mary Isabella Hales Horne, Emmeline B.

Early in 1882, Romania accompanied two Relief Society sisters, Zina D. H. Young and Ellen B. Ferguson, to New York in order to attend a Woman's Suffrage Convention.