She was born in Prague on May 15, 1937. Her name at birth was Marie Korbelová. Her parents were Josef and Anna Korbel. They were both Jewish and supporters of Czech President Edward Beneš;in the wake of Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia, the family fled to the United Kingdom.

The Korbels switched to Catholicism in 1941, and Marie and her siblings–younger sister Katherine and younger brother John–all grew up in the Catholic faith. The family survived the Blitz during World War II, living in the Notting Hill area of London and then in Walton-on-Thames, further away from the city center. After the war, the family returned to Prague and then, when Josef Korbel got a job at the Czech Embassy in Yugoslavia, moved to Belgrade. Marie got private education training from a governess and then attended a finishing school in Lake Geneva, Switzerland. While there, she changed her name to Madeleine; she also learned to speak French.

After the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, the family moved again, to the United States, by way of the U.K. They arrived at Ellis Island on Nov. 11, 1948, and settled in Great Neck, N.Y.

Josef Korbel eventually got a job in the political science department of the University of Denver. Madeleine, meanwhile, grew up and went to school in Denver, graduating from the Kent Denver School; while there, she founded the school's international relations club. She spent her initial university years at Wellesley College, in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She graduated in 1959 with a major in political science.

Albright had worked as an intern for the newspaper The Denver Post, where she met Joseph Albright; the couple were married in 1959, not long after she graduated from Wellesley. They lived in Rolla, Mo., and then Chicago, where she worked as a picture editor for the Encyclopedia Britannica. In 1961, they moved to Garden City, N.Y. In that same year, they had twins, Alice and Anne. Because the babies were born six weeks early, the hospital kept them for longer than normal; in the interim, Madeleine studied the Russian language at nearby Hofstra University.

The family moved to Georgetown, D.C., in 1962, and Albright studied Russian and international relations at the Johns Hopkins-affiliated Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. The next year, they moved back to Long Island, so Joseph could run a newspaper there. Their third daughter, Katherine, was born there in 1967. Albright earned her Master's Degree and her PhD at Columbia University, in the Department of Public Law and Government; she also earned a certificate in Russian.

Teaching one of the graduate courses that Albright took was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who recruited her to work at the White House in the administration of President Jimmy Carter. In 1980, when Carter did not win re-election, Albright moved on to a research grant, associated with the Smithsonian Institution, to study Polish dissidents.

The Albrights divorced in 1982. Madeleine did not remarry.

She took a job at Georgetown University, where she directed the program on women in global politics. She served as a foreign policy advisor to the 1984 Democratic Party nominee for President, Walter Mondale, and to the 1988 Democratic Party nominee for President, Michael Dukakis. In 1993, President Bill Clinton named her to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. After Clinton had been re-elected, he had a vacancy at the head of the State Department, Warren Christopher having decided not to continue as Secretary. Clinton chose Albright from a small field of contenders, and she took over on Jan. 23, 1997, becoming the first woman ever to be U.S. Secretary of State.

A strong, persuasive presence, Albright soon debunked the idea that other world leaders would not deal with her because she was a woman. In 1997, she played a major role in peace negotiations between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries. She was the first U.S. official to have a meeting with the newly elected President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in 2000; also in that year, she became one of the first Western leaders to meet with Kim Jong Il, visiting him in North Korea, the first U.S. Secretary of State to do so. She sought to increase human rights throughout the world and to diminish the spread of nuclear weapons to unstable nations. She favored military intervention as a tool of foreign policy and endorsed the airstrikes that ended the Kosovo conflict in 1999.

Albright retired from politics in 2001. She served for a time on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange and of the Council of Foreign Relations. She was the chairwoman of the Council of Women World Leaders and founded the Albright Institute for Global Affairs at Wellesley. In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her most recent role was as a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

Other facts about Madeleine Albright:

• She also spoke German, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian.
• She was a tireless advocate of physical fitness and maintained a strenuous exercise regimen throughout her life.
• She was a member of the National Women's Hall of Fame and the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.
• She wrote the books Madam Secretary, The Mighty and the Almighty, Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership, Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box, Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937–1948, and Fascism: A Warning.
• She had brief stints on television, appearing on Gilmore Girls and Parks and Recreation.