Janet Howell

Janet Evans Denison was born in Washington, D.C., on 7 May 1944 to Edward Fulton Denison, an economist at the US Department of Commerce and the Brookings Institution, and Elsie Lightbown Denison, who worked at the Women's Bureau and was a civic activist in Montgomery County, Maryland. She graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in government in 1966 and earned a master's degree in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988.

Howell worked as a public school teacher and as a legislative assistant to Kenneth R. Plum in the Virginia House of Delegates. She chaired the Fairfax County Social Services Board from 1979 to 1982, was president of the Reston Community Association from 1982 to 1985, and served on the Virginia State Board of Social Services from 1986 to 1991.

In 1991 she was elected to the Senate of Virginia for the 32nd district, succeeding Clive L. DuVal II, and took office in 1992. Her district took in Reston, Tysons, Wolf Trap and parts of McLean and Arlington County. In 1998 she introduced Virginia's version of Megan's Law, creating an online sex offender registry, and in 2003 she sponsored legislation making clergy mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect. In 1997 she became the first woman to join the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee.

After the Virginia Tech shooting she wrote several bills to expand mental health policy, and she led reforms of family violence laws. As chair of the Privileges and Elections Committee she oversaw the 2011 redrawing of Senate districts. In 2015 she introduced legislation to repeal the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. In 2019 she became the first woman to chair Finance and Appropriations, and in 2020 and 2022 she sponsored laws expanding mail-in voting, ballot drop boxes and no-excuse absentee voting. She retired on 10 January 2024 after redistricting placed her in the same district as Senator Jennifer Boysko.

Howell lived in Reston, Virginia. She married Hunt Howell, her college sweetheart, in 1966, and they had two children. In 2019 she shattered an ankle while hiking in the Adirondacks, and tests during her recovery revealed an earlier silent heart attack, leading to quadruple bypass surgery. That year she and her daughter-in-law Theresa Howell published Leading the Way: Women in Power, with a foreword by Hillary Clinton.

Janet Howell died in Reston, Virginia, on Sunday 2 August 2026, at the age of 82. The cause of death was not made public. Tributes came from Governor Abigail Spanberger, Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi, who called her a mentor, House Speaker Don Scott, Senate President pro tempore Louise Lucas, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, and Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner.

Howell was one of the longest serving women in the history of the Senate of Virginia. Colleagues remembered her as a trailblazer who opened the state's budget committee to women and mentored a generation of women legislators, and ARLnow described her as a Democrat with moderate leanings and a willingness to work across the aisle.