Marie Laveau after a painting by Charles Gandolfo (September 10, 1801 – June 16, 1881) was an American practitioner of voodoo. Of her magical career, little definite can be said. She is said to have had a snake called Zombi. Oral traditions suggest that the occult part of her magic mixed Roman Catholic beliefs and saints with African spirits and religious concepts. It is also alleged that her feared magical powers came in fact from a network of informants in the households of the prominent that she developed while a hairdresser and that she owned her own brothel. She excelled at obtaining inside information on her wealthy patrons by apparently instilling fear in their servants whom she "cured" of mysterious ailments.

On June 16, 1881, the New Orleans newspapers announced that Marie Laveau had died. This is noteworthy if only because she continued to be seen in the town after her supposed demise. Again, confusing the two voodoo women, it is claimed one of her daughters also named Marie (many of the daughters had Marie within their name due to Catholic naming) assumed her name and carried on her magical practice prior to her death and taking over as the queen near or after her death.

According to the list of deaths recorded at RootsWeb.com, a certain Marie Glapion Lavau died on June 15, 1881, aged 98. The different spelling of the last name as well as the age at death may result from inaccuracies during entry of the cited text file.

A "free person of color," Marie Laveau was the illegitimate daughter of a rich Creole plantation owner, Charles Laveaux, and his mistress Marguerite (who was reportedly half black, half Indian). Marie was probably born about 1794. At the age of twenty-five she married a carpenter named Jacques Paris, also a free person of color, who soon went missing and was presumed dead. Following the custom of the time, she began calling herself the "Widow Paris." Soon, she entered a common-law marriage with one Christophe de Glapion with whom she would have fifteen children, but as late as 1850 a newspaper still referred to her as "Marie Laveaux, otherwise Widow Paris" (Tallant 1946, 67).