Leanne Benjamin

Leanne Faye Benjamin AM OBE (born 13 July 1964) is a retired Australian ballet dancer who was a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet in London.

Benjamin was born in Rockhampton, Queensland, to Jill and Bernie Benjamin.

Benjamin began ballet lessons at age four at the Jan Moore School of Dance in Rockhampton. Later, she and her sister trained with Valeria Hansen. In 1980, she was accepted into the Royal Ballet School at age 16. Within a year, she won two prestigious awards, the Adeline Genée Gold Medal and Prix de Lausanne.

She joined the Company in 1992, becoming a Principal by the spring of that season. She was also a Principal with Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, English National Ballet and Deutsche Opera Ballet and danced with Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company at New York City Center in 2008. She retired from the Royal Ballet in July 2013 after 21 years with the company.

In 2004 and 2009 she won the National Dance Award for Best Female Dancer.

Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, Giselle, the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, Nikiya, Kitri, Swanilda, The Firebird, Cinderella, Lise, Titania, Manon, Anastasia, Juliet (Ashton and MacMillan), Mitzi Caspar and Mary Vetsera in Mayerling, Irina, The Girl in The Invitation, The Judas Tree, Song of the Earth, Gloria, Requiem, Rhapsody, Elite Syncopations, Les Biches, Symphony in C, Apollo, Danses Concertantes, Etudes, Brünnhilde in Béjart's Ring, Carmen, Forsythe's Herman Schmerman and Ashton's The Leaves Are Fading, Swanilda in Coppélia.

She has created roles in Bintley's Metamorphosis, The Snow Queen and Earth as part of Homage to The Queen, Bruce's Symphony in Three Movements and in Mr. Worldly Wise, Two-Part Invention, When We Stop Talking, Masquerade and most recently Wayne McGregor's Qualia, "Infra", and "Limen", Robert Garland's Spring Rites, Alastair Marriott's Tanglewood, Liam Scarlett's Despite and Wheeldon's DGV.

In honour of her career with The Royal Ballet, the Leanne Benjamin Awards, are to be launched at a public masterclass at The Royal Ballet School on 12 June 2014. The awards were created and will be administered by The Tait Memorial Trust. The awards are scholarships for young Australian ballet dancers studying in the UK.

In January 2014, Leanne Benjamin was awarded the Critics’ Circle de Valois award for outstanding achievement.

She is married and has a son, born in 2003.

At the 2005 British New Years Honours, Benjamin was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her services to dance. Ten years later at the 2015 Australia Day Honours, Benjamin was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the performing arts, particularly ballet, as a dancer and role model.