A woman who is the senior member of a group, class, or profession.
Origin
Doyenne comes from the Old French word deien , which is also the root of the word dean. The suffix -enne is a French suffix for a personal female noun.
Quotes
Inspector Neele propounded to himself three separate highly coloured reasons why the faithful doyenne of the typists’ room should have poisoned her employer’s mid-morning cup of tea, and rejected them as
unlikely.
— Agatha Christie, A Pocket Full of Rye
