Former First Lady and Leyte Representative, also known as the “Steel Butterfly”, Imelda Romualdez Marcos was born on July 2, 1929, in Manila. Imelda was voted Miss Manila in the early 1950s. She became the beautiful wife and confidante of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1954. He was then a member of the House of Representatives. When her husband became president in 1965, Marcos took an active role in political life. The Marcoses had three children: Imee Marcos- Manotoc, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos and Irene Marcos-Araneta.
The Marcos regime (1965-86) was said to have been marked by corruption, political repression and gross financial shenanigans, acts to which Imelda was almost certainly privy. The Marcoses were said to have used their power to amass private wealth, siphoning foreign aid, loans, and the profits of domestic companies into private bank accounts. Mrs. Marcos faces several corruption-related cases before Philippine courts.

In the 1986 elections, a popular uprising forced the Marcoses into exile and put Corazon Aquino in power. They fled to Hawaii, where Ferdinand died in 1989. After the Marcos regime was overthrown in 1986, opposition forces found thousands of pairs of high-fashion shoes in Imelda's closets; the shoes became a symbol of her life of luxury amid the poverty of most Filipinos.  

 In 1992, Mrs. Marcos returned to the Philippines and campaigned for the presidency; however, she received only a small percentage of the votes cast. In 1995 Marcos won election to the House of Representatives representing the first district in her home province of Leyte. In October of 2001 she was arrested and formally charged with corruption and amassing a fortune of up to five billion dollars illegally during her husband's regime.