Victoria Woodhull's childhood sounds like something out of a Dickens novel. She was born in 1837 to a large, poor family. When her father was accused of stealing from some neighbors, Woodhull and her clan were run out of their hometown of Homer, Ohio. From an early age, Woodhull believed she had the ability to communicate with spirits, and her father put her to work as a spiritual adviser. She and her sister, Tennessee, became the family's primary breadwinners. When Dr. Canning Woodhull, an older man, proposed marriage to the 14-year-old Woodhull, it seemed like an idyllic escape from her hard-knock life. But the reality of her first marriage was more like a nightmare. Her husband was a philandering alcoholic, Woodhull's son was born with brain damage, and her daughter nearly died at birth because her husband delivered the baby while drunk.

Eventually, Woodhull left her good-for-nothing husband and rejoined her family's traveling caravan of spiritual guides and healers. Woodhull's customers were usually women trapped in unhappy marriages, with too many children and not enough money. Their stories shaped her political views, including her belief that traditional marriages imprisoned women.

During her travels, Woodhull met and married a handsome, educated Civil War hero named James Harvey Blood. Blood was sensitive to the troubles she had endured while trying to earn a decent living, support a family and survive a bad marriage, and he encouraged her to imagine political solutions to these widespread problems. In 1867, the couple moved to New York City with Woodhull's family in tow. There, Woodhull and her sister became spiritual advisers to the richest man in America, Cornelius Vanderbilt. The railroad magnate reciprocated by giving the women stock tips. By 1869, they had amassed enough money to open their own brokerage house, an aberration in a time when most women couldn't even have bank accounts in their own name.

Woodhull's personal and financial independence was nothing short of revolutionary; she and her sister became the talk of the tabloids and the toast of the town. Her accomplishments even made an impression on the high-brow leaders of the women's movement, including Susan B. Anthony. In April 1870, Woodhull made her boldest move yet, declaring herself a candidate for the 1872 presidential election. That same year, she also started her own newspaper, spoke about women's suffrage before the Judiciary Committee, and met with President Ulysses Grant.

But Woodhull was fighting an uphill battle. Congress rejected her egalitarian proposals and, when the economy started to slip, so did the fortunes of her newspaper and financial firm. Woodhull's political foes also began a smear campaign, questioning the validity of Woodhull and Blood's marriage documents and creating a scandal over the fact that the couple shared a home with Woodhull's ex-husband (she was helping him through his battle with alcoholism). Even the suffragists began to distance themselves. Woodhull responded by proudly proclaiming that she believed in the right of women to live their lives as they wished.

Still, things got worse when she embarked on a campaign against the popular preacher Henry Ward Beecher, one of her harshest critics. Although he criticized her for living a "free love" lifestyle, Woodhull had learned he was an adulterer. When Woodhull revived her recently bankrupt newspaper to detail one of Beecher's affairs, she was promptly arrested for peddling obscenity. A long, sensational and expensive trial followed, all but destroying her.

In 1875, bankrupt and ridiculed, Woodhull left for England, where she fell in love with a wealthy banker named John Biddulph Martin; he became her third husband. Woodhull lived a life of luxury in London, raising her children Byron and Zula. However, she didn't completely abandon her political passions. Woodhull started a new newspaper, gave lectures and became involved in local charities.

Woodhull was 82 in 1920, the year women finally got the right to vote in America. She died seven years later. But it wasn't until nearly a century after this remarkable woman had opened her own brokerage firm that married women in most states were allowed to have their own bank accounts. Woodhull had always claimed that "women should own themselves," and through her words and actions, she helped make that happen.

"Intimate Portrait: Victoria Woodhull" is narrated by Ann Richards, and it features interviews with former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, biographers Mary Gabriel and Lois Underhill, and historian Bea Berg.