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Pharaoh Hatshepsut of the 18th Dynasty New Kingdom Egypt (~1479–1458 BCE).

She was the first female pharaoh (full deal, not regent), she reshaped governance away from strength of arms and ad-hoc decision-making toward merit-driven bureaucracy, and through this prioritized commerce over conquest, drastically enriching Egypt in the process by building up massive trading networks. She was responsible for some of the greatest monumental construction of the New Kingdom era. (Tragically these monuments were systematically erased by her successor, Thutmose III, because he was butt-hurt that a woman had ruled over men—but he did keep her trading networks even as he moved back toward the conquest model.)

Oh and she wore men's clothing. Fake beard and all. To cement her legitimacy as pharaoh.

As an alternative I might choose Zenobia of the Palmyrene Empire (267-272 CE). She broke free from the Roman Empire in a big "fuck you" battle to carve out one of her own, conquered Egypt, ousting the Roman provost in the process, setting it up as a client state, and by 271 she controlled Syria, Palestine, Arabia Petraea, and parts of Mesopotamia (and thus the trade routes of Asia Minor). All the while she was pitching Palmyria as a safe haven for scholars of all kinds.

She was such a problem that she became THE major enemy of Rome and they committed an enormous number of troops to take her out. She finally lost, and was caught while fleeing to Persia, ending her reign. She'd spent only five years ruling Palmyria, but they were an extraordinarily productive half-decade that had lasting impact in the region as people realize you could, in fact, stand up to Rome.