I wanted to contribute to the list of female designers both historical and contemporary:
Charlotte Perriand - who along with Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier designed the furniture that Le Corbusier usually gets credit for - LC2, B306 chaise longue, among others. I’ll quote Apartment Therapy here “Different sources treat attribution differently: some credit Perriand alone, others credit Le Corbusier alone, but each mention the other two names as being partly responsible for the designs”.
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/last-week-we-discussed-98469
Helen Kerr - when I was studying I.D. my mom saw her on T.V. (in canada). She really loved how Helen spoke about designing products. I became a fan after that.
Inga Sempe - contemporary furniture and product designer - I’m a huge fan of her work. Her forms are unique which is super hard in the over saturated furniture market.
Women who work in partnership:
Kim Colin from Industrial Facility. If you like Muiji, they design a lot of their products and have a very distinct way of designing.
http://www.industrialfacility.co.uk/
Stephanie Forsythe from Molo design. The whole line of softwall/ softseat/ softlamp products is brilliant.