Venus Williams was born on 17 June 1980 in Lynwood, California, and grew up in Compton, where she began playing at the age of five. When she was ten the family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, so that she and her younger sister Serena could attend a tennis academy. She played her first WTA tournament in Oakland in October 1994, at 14, and in 1997 she reached the US Open final at her first attempt, the first woman to do so since Pam Shriver in 1978.
Her breakthrough came in 2000. She beat the defending champion Lindsay Davenport to win Wimbledon, the first Black woman to win the title since Althea Gibson in the 1950s, then won the US Open and two gold medals at the Sydney Olympics. She defended both titles in 2001. On 25 February 2002 she became world No. 1, the first Black woman to reach the top of the rankings in the Open Era, and she held it for 11 weeks. In 2002 and 2003 the sisters met in four consecutive major finals, and Serena won all four.
She won Wimbledon three more times, in 2005, 2007 and 2008. In 2011 she revealed that she had Sjögren's syndrome, a chronic immune-system disorder, and kept playing: in 2012 she won Olympic doubles gold and the Wimbledon doubles with Serena.
She finished with seven major singles titles, five Wimbledons and two US Opens, 14 major women's doubles titles with Serena, two mixed doubles titles, 49 singles titles and five Olympic tennis medals, four of them gold. In 2007 she launched her own clothing line, EleVen. She kept competing long after her peak: in 2025, at 45, she returned to the US Open, and in September 2026 she and Serena played the US Open doubles together again.