Rachel Elnaugh was the first female investor on the original British Dragons' Den panel after its launch.
Elnaugh joined the initial group of Dragons when the BBC series began in 2005. She was an entrepreneur associated with the Red Letter Days experience-gift business and brought experience of building a consumer-focused company to the panel.
Her tenure was relatively short compared with some later investors, which can make the programme’s early panel history easy to misremember. Deborah Meaden became the best-known long-serving female Dragon after joining later, but she was not the first woman to sit on the original panel. Rachel Elnaugh therefore marks the programme’s earliest female investor presence.