Marie Breen

Dame Marie Breen DBE
Senator for Victoria
In office 1 July 1962 – 30 June 1968
Personal details
Born	Marie Freda Chamberlin (1902-11-03)3 November 1902 St Kilda, Victoria, Australia
Died	17 June 1993(1993-06-17) (aged 90) Elsternwick, Victoria, Australia
Political party	Liberal
Other political affiliations	AWNL
Spouse	Robert Breen ​ ​ (m. 1928; died 1968)​
Children	3, including Jeannette Patrick

Dame Marie Freda Breen DBE (3 November 1902 – 17 June 1993) was an Australian politician who, following her election in 1961, became the second woman in the Australian Senate to represent the state of Victoria and the sixth female senator in Australia overall. In 1965, she became the first woman to chair an Australian Senate committee. She was noted for her commitment to improving the wellbeing of Australian women, children, and family units, as well as her commitment to community service. She worked towards greater inclusion of women in official positions and was a major advocate for the strengthening of Australia–Asia relations.

The daughter of an town clerk in St Kilda, Victoria, Breen was interested in politics from an early age; she became more politically involved after her husband, Robert Tweeddale Breen, was elected mayor of Brighton. She and her husband joined the Liberal Party when it was established in 1945. With the Liberal Party, she ran for a spot in the Senate at the 1961 federal election; she defeated Frank McManus and took office in July 1962. After retiring from the Senate in 1968 in order to care for her grievously injured husband, she devoted her life to community service and humanitarian efforts; she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her achievements in 1979. Breen died in 1993; she was memorialised by senator Rod Kemp as a "remarkable woman with great strength of character".^[1]