Frances Roth

Frances Levenstein Roth (April 1896 – June 20, 1971) was an American lawyer and founding director of the Culinary Institute of America.

Born in New Haven, Connecticut in April 1896, she earned a degree in law from New York University Law School and at the age of 21 became the first woman to be admitted to the Connecticut Bar Association, and then the first women prosecutor for New Haven in 1925. After leaving her job as assistant prosecutor at the New Haven city court in 1937, she aided the state's welfare commissioner on juvenile delinquency issues and supervised a newly formed juvenile court in the early 1940s. She also served as secretary of the Social Protection Committee in the Connecticut War Council during World War II.

She had developed a reputation for being able to "get things done", and the New Haven Restaurant Association asked her to direct a new culinary school, which eventually was named the Culinary Institute of America. The school opened on May 22, 1946, with sixteen students, and she ran it until 1965 by which time it had expanded to have over 300 students. In 1951 she discussed the school with Eleanor Roosevelt on the latter's radio program. Roth died in 1971, at the age of 75.