Anne Elisabeth Jane "Liz" Claiborne (March 31, 1929 – June 26, 2007) was a Belgian-born American fashion designer and entrepreneur. Claiborne is best known for founding Liz Claiborne Inc. which in 1986 became the first company founded by a woman to make the Fortune 500. Claiborne was the first woman to become chairperson and CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Claiborne, frustrated at the failure of the companies that she worked for to provide clothes for working women, started her own design company, Liz Claiborne Inc., in 1976. It was an immediate success with sales of $2 million in 1976 and $23 million in 1978. By 1988 it had acquired one-third of the American women's upscale sportswear market.

Liz Claiborne Inc. went public in 1981 and made the Fortune 500 in 1986 with retail sales of $1.2 billion.

Claiborne listed all employees in the directory in alphabetical order to circumvent what she perceived as male hierarchies. She controlled meetings by ringing a glass bell and became famous for her love of red-- "Liz Red." She would sometimes pose as a saleswoman to see what average women thought of her clothes. Liz Claiborne died on June 26, 2007 at the age of 78, following a long battle with the cancer.