She is best known as the first Australian woman to serve as a member of parliament. Cowan has featured on the reverse of Australia's dollar note since Cowan was born on a sheep station near Geraldton , Western Australia. She was the granddaughter of two of the colony's early settlers, Thomas Brown and John Wittenoom.
Cowan's mother died when she was seven, and she was subsequently sent to boarding school in Perth. At the age of 14, her father, Kenneth Brown , was executed for the murder of her stepmother, making her an orphan. She subsequently lived with her grandmother in Guildford, Western Australia until her marriage at the age of She and her husband would have four children together, splitting their time between homes in West Perth and Cottesloe.
In , Cowan was one of the founders of the Karrakatta Club , the first women's social club in Australia. She became prominent in the women's suffrage movement, which saw women in Western Australia granted the right to vote in Cowan was also a leading advocate for public education and the rights of children particularly those born to single mothers.
She was one of the first women to serve on a local board of education , and in helped to found the Children's Protection Society, whose lobbying resulted in the creation of the Children's Court the following year. Cowan was a co-founder of the Women's Service Guild in , and in helped establish a state branch of the National Council of Women.
Cowan was a key figure in the creation of the King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women , and became a member of its advisory board when it opened in She was made a magistrate in and a justice of the peace in In , Cowan was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia as a member of the Nationalist Party , becoming Australia's first female parliamentarian.
