The college was founded in 1965 by female academics of the University of Cambridge who believed that the university offered too few and too restricted opportunities for women as either students or academics. Its origins are traceable to the
Society of Women Members of the Regent House who are not Fellows of Colleges (informally known as the Dining Group) which in the 1950s sought to provide the benefits of collegiality to its members who, being female, were not college
fellows. At the time there were only two women's colleges in Cambridge,
Girton and
Newnham, insufficient for the large and growing numbers of female academic staff in the university. The college was named in honour of
Lucy Caroline Cavendish, a pioneer of women's education and the great-aunt of one of its founders,
Margaret Braithwaite. The first president of the college, from 1965 to 1970, was
Anna McClean Bidder, one of the founding members of the Dining Group and a
zoologist specialising in
cephalopod digestion; She was succeeded by
Kate Bertram until 1979,
Phyllis Hetzel (Lady Bowden),
Dame Anne Warburton,
Baroness Perry of Southwark,
Dame Veronica Sutherland,
Janet Todd,
Jackie Ashley and
Madeleine Atkins. The current and tenth president of Lucy Cavendish is
Girish Menon, who took up the post in 2025, and is the first male president of the college. With effect from October 2021, Lucy Cavendish has admitted both women and men from the standard university age. The college gave as its primary reason for the change "to grow graduate and undergraduate numbers to support the University and the other colleges in making more places available for excellent students from under-represented backgrounds." The mission of the college was to open the Cambridge door to talented and exceptional students from under-represented and non-traditional backgrounds. Lucy Cavendish, uniquely in Cambridge, became broadly representative in its UK student body of the UK's national society. On 4 December 2019 the college appointed its first male fellows. In the 2022 admission cycle, Lucy Cavendish became the first University of Cambridge college to admit more than 90% of its undergraduates from state schools. Today, the student community spans more than 85 countries, with over 93% of UK undergraduates from state schools. == College site ==