Fleury, Eleanora Lilian (1860–1940), psychiatrist, was born in Dublin, daughter of Dr Charles R. Fleury. Little is known of her childhood or early education. She was the first woman medical graduate of the RUI (1890), and was first in order of merit that year, receiving a gold medal. As a student she spent time at the Richmond Asylum, Dublin, and at the London School of Medicine for Women (LSMW), where she went for a three-month course of clinical instruction in mental diseases. She later published a paper in the LSMW magazine on climacteric melancholia (October 1905). After qualifying she worked at the Homerton Fever Hospital, London, as assistant medical officer and clinical assistant, before returning to Ireland, taking up a position as a psychiatrist at the Richmond Asylum (which later became the Grangegorman mental hospital) for twenty-seven years, where she worked with Dr Conolly Norman (qv), director and psychiatrist. She also lectured and gave practical instruction to nurses and attendants, to prepare them for the certificate in mental nursing of the Medical Psychological Association (MPA), an examination first held in 1891.
Promoted to assistant medical officer (deputy director) in charge of the female house at Portrane Asylum, Donabate, she was bypassed when its director, Henry Cullinan, died (1912). Though she was next in seniority, the position was given to John Redington, as the committee considered it inadvisable to have a female doctor in charge of the asylum. In 1925 the director's position was vacant again, and the Department of Local Government and Public Health and its minister, despite opposition from the selection committee, would still not consent to the appointment of a woman as director. The resignation of Fleury, who was near retirement age (and whose position was then filled by a male), facilitated the appointment of the first woman superintendent, Dr Mary Anne White.
A successful psychiatrist, Fleury was the first woman member of the Medico-Psychological Association, latterly the Royal College of Psychiatrists. First proposed in 1893 by Conolly Norman (then president of the MPA), she was allowed membership the following year, after a change of rules was voted (23 to 7) to allow admission of women, quite an acknowledgement of her standing for that time.
After her retirement she moved from the asylum to an address at Oldcourt Manor, Kilbride, Co. Dublin. She died in 1940.