A woman of substance " Senator Hillary Diane Clinton ( Democratic presidential candidates of United State of America)

Hillary Clinton was born Hillary Diane Rodham on October 26, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois. She was raised in Park Ridge, Illinois, a picturesque suburb located 15 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. Hillary was the firstborn child of Hugh Rodham, a prosperous fabric store owner, and Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham; she has two younger brothers, Hugh Jr. (born 1950) and Anthony (born 1954).

As a young woman, Hillary was active in young Republican groups and campaigned for Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in 1964. She was inspired to work in some form of public service after hearing a speech in Chicago by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jn., and became a Democrat in 1968.

Hillary attended Wellesley College, where she was active in student politics and was elected senior class president before graduating in 1969. She then attended Yale Law School, where she met Bill Clinton. After graduating with honors in 1973, she went on to enroll at the Yale Child Study Center, where she took courses on children and medicine and completed one year of post-graduate study.

During her summers as a college student, Hillary worked at a variety of jobs. In 1971, she first came to Washington, D.C. to work on U.S. Senator Walter Mondale's subcommittee on migrant workers. In the summer of 1972, she worked in the western states for the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern.

In the spring of 1974, Rodham became a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff, advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives during the Watergate scandal. After President Richard M. Nixon resigned in August, she became a faculty member of the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville, where her Yale classmate and boyfriend Bill Clinton was teaching as well.

Marriage to Bill Clinton

Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton on October 11, 1975, at their home in Fayetteville. Before their engagement, Clinton secretly purchased a small house that Hillary had once remarked that 
she liked. When he proposed marriage to her and she accepted, he revealed that they owned the house. Their daughter, Chelsea Victoria, was born on February 27, 1980.

In 1976, Hillary worked on Jimmy Carter's successful campaign for president while husband Bill was elected attorney general of Arkansas. Bill Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas in 1978 at age 32, lost reelection in 1980, but came back to win in 1982, 1984, 1986 (when the term of office was expanded from two to four years) and 1990.

Hillary joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock and, in 1977, was appointed to part-time chairman of the Legal Services Corporation by President Carter. As first lady of Arkansas for a dozen years (1979–1981, 1983–1992), she chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee, co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, and served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital, Legal Services and the Children's Defense Fund. She also served on the boards of TCBY and Wal-Mart. In 1988 and 1991, The National Law Journal named her one of the 100 most powerful lawyers in America.

First Lady

During Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary emerged as a dynamic and valued partner, and during his subsequent presidency, Hillary took on far more than the traditional role of the first lady. In 1993 Bill selected her to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. The controversial commission produced a complicated plan that never came to the floor of either house. It was abandoned in September 1994. 

Despite this failure, Hillary's involvement deepened her interest in health care, and combining 
her new-found experience with her past work involving child- and family-advocacy groups she 

championed a number of related causes. In 1997 she was influential in the creation of the 
Children's Health Insurance Program, which provided state funding for children whose parents could not afford to pay for their health care, and she was also instrumental in the passing of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, a series of reforms aimed at American adoption and foster-care systems.  

Hillary also used her influence as first lady to support various women's causes. Working with attorney general Janet Reno, in 1995 she helped create the Violence Against Women office in Department of Justice, and working with secretary of state Madeline Albright she traveled extensively to nations around the world to promote equal rights for women. 

But Hillary's tenure as first lady was not without its controversies. In 1993, she and her husband were implicated in a Department of Justice investigation relating to the Whitewater real estate project in Arkansas. The project's bank, Morgan Guaranty Savings and Loan failed, costing the federal government $73 million. Whitewater later became the subject of congressional hearings and an independent counsel investigation, and in January 1996 Hillary was compelled to appear before a federal grand jury. No charges were ever filed against her. 

Trouble arose again in 1998, when the White House became engulfed in the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Although Hillary publicly supported her husband during the ensuing fallout, she was reported to have considered leaving her husband. Articles of impeachment were brought against Bill Clinton later that year, but in February 1999 the U.S. Senate failed to convict him and he remained in office for the remainder of his term.

Senate and First Presidential Bid

With her husband limited to two terms in the White House, Hillary Clinton decided she would seek the U.S. Senate seat from New York, held by outgoing Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was retiring after four terms. Despite early problems, and charges of carpet bagging, Clinton beat popular Republican Rick Lazio by a surprisingly wide margin: 55 percent to 43 percent. When she was sworn in on January 3, 2001, Clinton became the first wife of a president to seek and win national office and the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from New York. During her first term, she picked up where she left off, devoting her efforts to health care and children's and women's rights. in 2003, she also published a best-selling memoir, Living History. 

In 2006 Clinton easily won reelection to a second term in Senate. Early the following year, however, she announced plans to make a new addition to the list of firsts on her political résumé—to be elected the first female president of the United States. After beginning her campaign as the front-runner for the nomination during the Democratic primaries, she was eventually edged out by Barack Obama in June 2008 and ended her campaign several days later. Obama won the general election that November.

U.S. Secretary of State

Shortly after winning the U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama nominated Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. She accepted the nomination and was officially approved by the Senate as the 67th U.S. secretary of state on January 21, 2009.

During her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton used her position to make women's rights and 

human rights a central talking point of U.S. initiatives. She became one of the most traveled secretaries of state in American history and promoted the use of social media to convey the country's positions. 

Clinton also led U.S. diplomatic efforts around the world, including during the Arab Spring and the 2011 military intervention in the Libyan Civil War. In the fight against terrorism, she was a strong supporter of President Obama in his decisions regarding military support for Afghanistan, and also for the use of American special forces in the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

But as was the case during her time as first lady, in 2012 Clinton faced scandal once again, when the State Department came under investigation following a deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. An independent panel issued a report about the Benghazi attack, which found "systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies" at the State Department. 

Health Issues

Clinton, who said she took responsibility for security at the outpost in Benghazi, was scheduled to testify about the attack before Congress in December 2012. She canceled her scheduled testimony, however, citing a stomach virus and, later, a concussion that she suffered after fainting (the cause of which was later reported as dehydration). Some members of Congress questioned the timing of Clinton's illnesses, including Representative Allen West, who stated that he believed the secretary of state was suffering from "a case of Benghazi flu" on the day she was scheduled to testify.

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. 

Benghazi Testimony and Resignation

Clinton's testimony on the Benghazi attack came on January 23, 2013. Speaking to members of the House Foreign Relations Committee, she defended her actions while taking full responsibility for the incident and was moved to tears when discussing the American citizens who were killed in Benghazi. "As I have said many times since September 11, I take responsibility, and nobody is more committed to getting this right," she told the House, adding, "I am determined to leave the State Department and our country safer, stronger and more 
secure."

Since taking office in 2009, Clinton had repeatedly stated that she was only interested in serving one term as secretary of state. She officially stepped down from her post at the State Department on February 1, 2013.

Bid for 2016 Presidency

In early March 2015, Clinton faced controversy and criticism when it was revealed that she had used her personal email address to handle official government business during her time as secretary of state. In a news conference held at the United Nations, speaking initially of gender equality and the political situation in Iran, Clinton stated that she had utilized her personal email for convenience as allowed by State Department protocol. She later turned over all governmental correspondence to the Obama administration while deleting messages that could be construed as personal. 

After much speculation and assumptions over whether Clinton would run for the U.S. presidency, her plans were made official in the spring of 2015. On April 12, Clinton's campaign chairperson John D. Podesta announced via email that the former secretary of state was entering the race to secure the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2016 elections. This was immediately followed by an online campaign clip, with Clinton herself announcing at the end of the video that she's running for president. She is considered a front-runner and, if successful, would be the first woman to earn the nomination for a major party's presidential bid.