Rebecca Pearl Greenberg Lovenstein (ca. 25 May 1886–10 February 1971), attorney, was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, which at that time was in Russia, and was the daughter of Moses Greenberg and Dora Greenberg. During the 1890s members of the family immigrated to the United States and settled in the established and prosperous Jewish community in Durham, North Carolina. They became naturalized American citizens, but the date on which she became a citizen is not recorded. Her parents worked as grocers and merchants and were well known in the community for their fairness and generosity to African American neighbors and clients. As part of their family's community support, her mother funded special "Jewish rooms" in a local synagogue. The Greenbergs believed in higher education for all of their children, but Rebecca Greenberg interrupted her studies at Trinity College (later Duke University) to care for her ailing mother and instead studied with tutors.

On 16 March 1906, in a civil ceremony officiated by a Durham County justice of the peace, Greenberg married Benjamin Lovenstein, an attorney originally from Philadelphia but with a well-connected family in Richmond, Virginia. They initially lived in Durham, where they later held a Jewish wedding ceremony on 25 July 1907. They had three sons. Her husband was a colorful, even flamboyant, and at times controversial character who cut a broad swath through the Durham community. Active in local politics, he was known for his pugnacious representation of African American clients. He also operated other businesses, which led to financial problems and an indictment of embezzlement for which he was acquitted in 1910. About 1911 the Lovensteins moved to Richmond where he opened a law practice. Beginning in 1918, she took night classes at the law school of the University of Richmond while bringing up her sons, and in June 1920 Lovenstein and Carrie M. Gregory, of Lynchburg, were the first two Virginia women to pass the bar examination. On 28 June, two months before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote, Lovenstein qualified as an attorney before a Richmond Hustings Court judge. She paid her fees on 1 July 1920, making her the first woman to receive a law license in Virginia and becoming at the time one of the few Jewish women lawyers in the country.

Rebecca P. Lovenstein, as she generally styled herself, began practicing law immediately, generally in partnership with her husband. An early highlight of her legal career was when she joined her husband on 7 January 1925 to argue Mazer v. the Commonwealth in the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals against the attorney general and his chief deputies. She was the first woman to present an oral argument to the court and afterward the object of compliments from the attorney general, who lost the case, which turned on a question of whether a trial court judge had inadvertently but improperly asked questions during a trial relating to Virginia's 1918 Prohibition Act that might have influenced the jury. Fifteen years later, Lovenstein and her husband argued the divorce case of George C. McDaniel v. Mary Ferguson McDaniel before the Supreme Court of Appeals, but on 10 June 1940, the judges of the court unanimously ruled against their client. Indicative of the times, while her legal work was chronicled admiringly in local newspapers, readers were also assured that Lovenstein was not only an attorney but also a mother and homemaker.

Lovenstein may have belonged to Richmond's Temple Beth Ahabah and later joined Temple Beth El. She was an officer of the Virginia branch of the National Woman's Party and supported the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1920s and 1930s. She also routinely lent her support to Virginia and national political candidates. In May 1924 Lovenstein announced her candidacy for the House of Delegates, but she later declined to run. Personal tragedies touched the family several times. In December 1921, Lovenstein's brother-in-law murdered his wife (her sister) and then committed suicide; and in August 1935 her second son, then age twenty-four, committed suicide. Rebecca Lovenstein continued her law practice until at least 1960, four years after her husband's death of kidney disease on 9 August 1956.

Afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease, late in the 1960s Lovenstein moved to a nursing home in New York City, near one of her sons. Rebecca Pearl Greenberg Lovenstein died there on 10 February 1971 and was buried in Beth El Cemetery in Henrico County, Virginia. In recognition of her pioneering work as one of the first women lawyers in Virginia, in 2019 her name was placed on the Wall of Honor at the Virginia Women's Monument at Capitol Square in Richmond.

Sources Consulted:
Biography in Dorothy Thomas, "Rebecca Pearl Lovenstein," Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, 27 Feb. 2009, Jewish Women's Archive (viewed 4 Feb. 2020), with 25 May 1888 date of birth; feature articles in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 8 Jan. 1925 (with portrait), and 7 May 1927; United States Census Schedules, Durham Co., N.C., 1900 (with May 1886 date of birth) and 1910 (age twenty-three and naturalization in 1890), Richmond City, Virginia, 1920 (age thirty-two, immigration in 1893), 1930 (age forty-two), and 1940 (age fifty), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C; Durham Co., N.C., Marriage License (age nineteen on 16 Mar. 1906); Durham [N.C.] Recorder, 26 July 1907 (reporting Jewish wedding ceremony); Mazer v. Commonwealth (1925) Virginia Reports 142:649–657; McDaniel v. McDaniel (1940), Virginia Reports 175:402–410; Farmville Herald, 2 July 1920; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 15 June 1920, 26 June 1920, 1 May 1924, 17 Apr. 1925, 26 Jan. 1935; Richmond Evening Dispatch, 7 Apr. 1921; Peter Wallenstein, "'These New and Strange Beings': Women in the Legal Profession in Virginia, 1890–1990," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 101 (1993):193–226, esp. 204–206; obituaries in Richmond News Leader and Richmond Times-Dispatch, both 12 Feb. 1971.

Image courtesy of Library of Virginia.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Leila Christenbury.

How to cite this page:
Leila Christenbury, "Rebecca Pearl Greenberg Lovenstein (1886–1971)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2021 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Lovenstein_Rebecca_P, accessed [today's date]).