From laudanum to lipstick, housewife and self-taught chemist Marie Meurdrac (1610–1680) taught French women practical chemical recipes along with organic chemistry principles and procedures. With her chemistry textbook, Meurdrac openly challenged societal norms. Her goal was to give women access to science. This chapter argues that Marie Meurdrac situates herself on the edge of the early modern scientific community because, as she suggests, both her gender and her chosen scientific discipline are on the edge of science. The analysis below demonstrates how Meurdrac's work is disruptive, crossing the lines of gender roles, generic conventions, academic traditions, and scientific norms. Throughout the seventeenth century, relatively few European women found themselves even on the outskirts of science, especially in the fields of chemistry and medicine. Those women who did attempt to insert themselves within the male scientific circles were often criticized or even mocked, as represented in seventeenth-century French literature, theatre, and philosophy. Very few women studied chemistry, medicine, natural philosophy, biology, or other related sciences formally, if at all, and the few who did were mostly unknown, self-taught practitioners. At least one self-taught female chemist, Meurdrac, decided on her own that women needed a textbook covering chemistry principles and practical applications, writing one of the first chemistry textbooks, and the first by a female author. Because even bourgeois and aristocratic women were not included in formal scientific education at university, Meurdrac explains that she endeavoured to provide accessible written knowledge and informal hands-on training in chemistry, botany, pharmacology, and medicine, as well as in cosmetics.