Christensen, Donna Marie, 1945-

Donna Marie Christian-Christensen, formerly Donna Christian-Green (born September 19, 1945), is an American physician and politician. She served as the 4th elected non-voting Delegate from the United States Virgin Islands's at-large district to the United States House of Representatives from 1997 until 2015.

Born Donna Christian in Teaneck, New Jersey, she is the daughter of a Virgin Islands Federal District Court judge, Almeric Christian. She received her Bachelor of Science from St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana in 1966. Christensen then attended the George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., where she received an M.D. in 1970. She interned at San Francisco's Pacific Medical Center from 1970 to 1971 and performed her residency in family medicine at Howard University Medical Center from 1973 to 1974.

Donna Christian-Christensen worked as a physician, first in the emergency room and later in the maternity ward. She then served as medical director for the St. Croix Hospital in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. She was the Commissioner of Health for the Virgin Islands in 1993 and 1994 and also ran a private medical practice until 1996.

Christensen lost her first bid for Delegate to Congress in 1994, failing to secure the Democratic nomination. Two years later, she won the party’s nomination. On November 5, 1996, in a three-way general election she finished second behind the one-term incumbent, Independent Victor O. Frazer with 27 percent of the vote. Since Frazer only won a plurality with 47 percent, and not a majority, Christensen advanced to a special November 19 runoff against Frazer. In that contest she prevailed with a slim majority, 52 to 48 percent. In her subsequent eight general election campaigns, Christensen won with comfortable majorities that ranged as high as 80 percent; she ran unopposed in 2008. Her narrowest margin of victory (a 56.6 percent majority) came in a five-way general election in 2012, when three independent candidates captured a combined third of the overall vote.

In 2014 Christensen announced that she would not seek re-election to a tenth term in the House and would instead run for governor of the Virgin Islands. Though initially favored to win, Christensen finished second with 39 percent of the vote in the November 4, 2014, general election behind Kenneth Mapp who led the field of five candidates with 47 percent. In a runoff on November 18, Mapp prevailed against Christensen, 63 to 37 percent.