Lili Elbe (1882-1931) is the Danish artist and gender pioneer whose social and physical transformation and frank personal diaries have inspired others across the decades. Elbe studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen where she fell for fellow artist Gerda Gottlieb - the pair married in 1904. They moved to Paris in 1912 and, after years of denial and suppression, Elbe finally stepped out of the shadows and, with Gerda, into the nightlife of upscale Paris society. In the 1920's, Elbe discovered the possibility of surgically altering her body at the German Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. The term “transsexualism” was coined by the clinic's founder, gay rights activist Dr Magnus Hirschfield. Elbe underwent a series of operations both at the Institute and at the Dresden clinic of Kurt Warnekros in 1930-31. A final operation ended her life in September 1931. Earlier that summer, Elbe had written to a friend: “That I, Lili, am vital and have a right to life I have proved by living for 14 months…It may be said that 14 months is not much, but they seem to me like a whole and happy human life”.