Doris (Fleischman) Bernays, 1892-1980

The daughter of Samuel and Harriet (Rosenthal) Fleischman, Doris Elsa (Fleischman) Bernays was born in New York City on July 18, 1892. She graduated from the Horace Mann School in 1909 and in 1913 received her bachelor's degree from Barnard College. Upon graduation she took a job as a reporter for the New York Tribune, where she served successively as assistant women's page editor and assistant Sunday editor. An ardent feminist, she wrote on many issues of concern to women and was a participant in the first Women's Peace Parade in New York in 1917.

In 1919 DFB left newspaper work to join her future husband, Edward L. Bernays, in his new public relations firm in New York. It was largely through their pioneering efforts that the principles, practices, and ethics of the new profession of public relations were established. The firm went on to advise many important men, women, and organizations, including Dwight Eisenhower, Sigmund Freud, and Henry Ford. DFB and ELB were married in 1922; they had two daughters. DFB set a precedent in 1923, when the U.S. State Department issued her the first passport to a married woman under her maiden name. She continued to use her maiden name until 1955, when she decided that the continually required explanation was too much of a nuisance.

DFB contributed articles to the Ladies' Home Journal, the American Mercury, the Saturday Reivew of Literature, McCall's, and other periodicals. She was the editor of An Outline of Careers for Women (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1919), and a contributor to America As Americans See It (1932) and to Varied Harvest (1953), an anthology of writings by Barnard College graduates. In 1955 she published her bestselling memoir, A Wife Is Many Women (New York: Crown).

DFB was the vice-president of the Edward L. Bernays Foundation, president of the Woman Pays Club, and vice-president of the Lucy Stone League. A member of Women in Communications (the National Society of Women in Journalism and Communications), she received its highest honor, the National Headliner Award, in 1972. In 1961 DFB and ELB moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where DFB died following a stroke on July 11, 1980.

From the guide to the Papers, 1914-1977, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)