Rose Cecil O'Neill (June 25, 1874 – April 6, 1944) was an American cartoonist, illustrator, artist, and writer. She became famous when she created the popular comic strip characters, Kewpies, in 1909. She was the first published female cartoonist in the United States.
She grew up in rural Nebraska. Her father was a book salesman. ^Her mother was a homemaker. She bacame interested in the arts when she was still young. She wenmt to New York City to become an illustrator. She first published her Kewpie cartoons in 1909 in Ladies' Home Journal. In 1912, bisque dolls were made from them. The dolls were very popular. They are seen as one of the first mass-marketed dolls in the United States.
O'Neill also wrote several novels and books of poetry, and was active in the women's suffrage movement. For a time, she was the highest-paid female illustrator in the world because of the success of the Kewpie dolls. O'Neill has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
In 2022 at San Diego Comic Con, Rose O'Neill was inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame as a Comic Pioneer.