Hillary Clinton Biography

Hillary Clinton was born on October 26, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois, going on to earn her law degree from Yale University.

Rodham attended Wellesley College, where she was active in student politics and elected senior class president before graduating in 1969.

She then attended Yale Law School, where she met Bill Clinton. Graduating with honors in 1973, she went on to enroll at Yale Child Study Center, where she took courses on children and medicine and completed one post-graduate year of study.

She married fellow law school graduate Bill Clinton in 1975. Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton on October 11, 1975, at their home in Fayetteville. Their daughter, Chelsea Victoria, was born on February 27, 1980.

She later served as first lady from 1993 to 2001, and then as a U.S. senator from 2001 to 2009. In 1999, Clinton decided she would seek the U.S. Senate seat from New York held by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was retiring after four terms. Despite early problems and charges of carpetbagging, Clinton beat popular Republican Rick Lazio by a surprisingly wide margin: 55 percent to 43 percent. Clinton became the first wife of a president to seek and win public office and the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from New York. She easily won reelection in November 2006.

In early 2007, Clinton announced her plans to run for the presidency. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, she conceded the nomination when it became apparent that Barack Obama held a majority of the delegate vote.

After winning the national election, Obama appointed Clinton secretary of state. She was sworn in as part of his cabinet in January 2009 and served until 2013.

On December 30, 2012, Clinton was hospitalized with a blod clot related to the concussion that she had suffered earlier in the month.

She was released from a New York hospital on January 2, 2013, after receiving treatment, and soon recovered and returned to work.

In the spring of 2015, she announced her plans to run again for the U.S. presidency. In 2016, she became the first woman in U.S. history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party.