Leanne Benjamin AM OBE (b. 1964) was Principal Dancer with the Royal Ballet between 1993 and 2013. Born in Rockhampton, she started learning ballet at age three and was sixteen when she was accepted into the Royal Ballet School. She joined the Royal Ballet as a First Soloist in 1992 having performed with the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet (where she was Principal Dancer from 1987), the London Festival Ballet (where she was again promoted to Principal Dancer), and the Deutsche Oper Ballet, where she worked with choreographer and former artistic director of the Royal Ballet, Sir Kenneth MacMillan. It was at his urging that Benjamin joined the Royal Ballet, making her debut there in 1992 as Mary Vetsera in MacMillan's Mayerling, a role she reprised for her final performance with the company in 2013. In the intervening years, she danced leading roles in numerous ballets including some of the most iconic works in the repertoire (Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Coppelia, Giselle, The Firebird, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, for example), and created new roles for choreographers such as Alastair Marriott, Wayne McGregor, Alexei Ratmansky, David Bintley and Christopher Wheeldon. One of the last members of the Royal Ballet to work with Macmillan, Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton, Benjamin was awarded many accolades during her career including Best Female Dancer at the National Dance Awards (UK) in 2004 and 2009. She was named an OBE in 2005, a Member of the Order of Australia in 2015, and in 2014 she launched the Leanne Benjamin Awards – a scholarship scheme enabling young Australian dancers to train at the Royal Ballet School. In early 2024, Benjamin was appointed Artistic Director of the Queensland Ballet – the first woman to assume the role.
