History from below uncovers overlooked protagonists contributing to (inter)national endeavour often against considerable odds. Mrs T. Edward Bowdich then Mrs R. Lee (1791-1856) is indicative. When women allegedly cannot participate in early nineteenth-century scientific exploration, discovery and publication, Sarah’s multiple specialist contributions to French and British natural history have attracted no book-length study. This first appraisal of Sarah’s unbroken production of discipline-changing scientific work over three decades - in modern ichthyology, in historical geography of West Africa and in the next-generational dissemination of expert scientific knowledge - does more than fill this gap. The book also pivotally investigates the intercultural, interdisciplinary and multi-genre reach of Sarah’s pioneering perspectives and contributions, and how she could achieve her work independently in her own name(s) over three decades. Sarah’s larger significance is then to provide a very different narrative for women at work in expert nineteenth-century natural history-making. By everywhere challenging the secondary, minor and domestic frames for women’s contributions of the period, the pioneering perspectives of Sarah’s story also provide alternative paradigms to the ‘leaky-pipeline’ modelstill informing women’s careers and work in STEM(M) today.