Lena Rice

Helena Bertha Grace Rice (1866 to 1907), known as Lena, was an Irish tennis player who won the singles title at the 1890 Wimbledon Championships and remains the only Irish woman to win a Wimbledon singles title. She was born the second youngest of eight children in a Church of Ireland family at Marlhill near New Inn, County Tipperary, and learned the game in the family garden with her sister Anne before playing at the Cahir Lawn Tennis club. At the 1889 Irish Championships she won the mixed doubles with Willoughby Hamilton, and later that year reached the Wimbledon final, losing to Blanche Bingley Hillyard. In 1890 only four players entered; she beat May Jacks in the all-comers final and is credited with inventing the forearm smash. No later tournament play is recorded. She died of tuberculosis on her forty-first birthday.