Female assassins are rare, but there are more than you realize. They tend to fade from the history books because most of them were not successful in killing their targets. But the stories are fascinating. Take the case of Khioniya Guseva, who tried to kill Grigori Rasputin in a very public manner.
Said to be horribly disfigured through syphilis (she had no nose) Guseva attacked Rasputin as he was leaving Church in a town in Siberia.
She drove a knife in to his stomach, shouting that she had killed the antichrist while she did so. However, she hadn’t and he quickly tried to run away from her. She pursued him and attempted to finish the task but he managed to grab a stick and hit her in the face with it. Not very gentlemanly but he wasn’t exactly renowned for his manners.
Narrowly avoiding being killed by a mob that had gathered, Guseva managed to turn herself over the to the authorities and was committed to an asylum. Rasputin survived but was successfully assassinated two years later. It is not known when she died – and no pictures of her (with or without nose) survive.
Many of the women in this list at Kuriositas were committed to mental institutions, but some were executed, some served time, and a surprisingly number of them actually got away with no punishment. -via the Presurfer