Femme (/fɛm/pronunciation^ⓘ; French: [fam], literally meaning 'woman') is a term traditionally used to describe a lesbian woman who exhibits a feminine identity or gender presentation. While commonly viewed as a lesbian term, alternate meanings of the word also exist with some non-lesbian individuals using the word, notably some gay men and bisexuals. Some non-binary and transgender individuals also identify as lesbians using this term.

Heavily associated with lesbian history and culture, femme has been used among lesbians to distinguish traditionally feminine lesbians from their butch (i.e. masculine) lesbian counterparts and partners. Derived from American lesbian communities following World War II when women joined the workforce, the identity became a characteristic of the working-class lesbian bar culture of the 1940s–1950s. By the 1990s, the term femme had additionally been adopted by bisexual women.

Scholars Heidi M. Levitt and Sara K. Bridges state that the terms butch and femme are derived from the 1940s–1950s American lesbian communities following World War II "when women joined the work force and began wearing pants, creating the possibility for the development of a butch aesthetic and gender expression within gay women's communities." They state that "the butch–femme culture made lesbians visible for the first time."

Femme lesbian scholar Joan Nestle describes the femme lesbian identity as being underrepresented in historical records, with femme women having been often attacked for passing as straight while also being accused of imitating heteronormativity for pairing with a butch partner. In Nestle's text on femme identity, "The Femme Question", she challenges this commonly held belief by stating that butch–femme relationships are "filled with a deeply lesbian language of stance, dress, gesture, love, courage and autonomy." Arlene Istar Lev argues that through their subversive appropriation of heteronormative gender roles, these identities were considered "complex erotic and social statements" rooted in "gendered erotic identities". Nestle states that they publicly declared same-sex love between women at a time when there was no liberation movement to support or protect them, and adds that "in the 1950s particularly, butch–femme couples were the front-line warriors against sexual bigotry. Because they were so visible, they suffered the brunt of street violence. The irony of social change has made a radical, sexual, political statement of the 1950s appear today a reactionary, non feminist experience."

Lesbian feminism saw a rejection of the butch–femme dynamic and therefore femme identity. During the emergence of lesbian feminism, femme lesbians were accused by prominent lesbian feminist figures of aping patriarchal beauty standards for wearing traditional feminine clothing. Black lesbian feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde wrote in Tar Beach that "butch and femme role playing was the very opposite of what we felt being gay was all about – the love of women".

Many bisexual women also active in the lesbian community felt pressured to identify as "lesbian", resulting in bisexual erasure factoring into the history of femme identities. This is further impacted by the fact that bisexual communities and the related bisexual movement did not formalize until the 1970s.

During the 1990s and the emergence of the lipstick lesbian identity into the mainstream, femme became a catch-all term to describe a feminine lesbian. Citing research from the 1990s, Levitt and Bridges stated that the terms butch and femme "began infiltrating bisexual communities, and women began writing about their experiences as bisexual femmes", but also that "very little empirical research has been conducted looking at the expression and experience of gender expression and gender identity within bisexual women."

With expansion of the femme identity, sexual attraction differences between butches and femmes began to be analyzed. Scholars Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender wrote, "Femme diversity is also manifested in the sexual arena. As many femmes may be attracted exclusively to butches, some are attracted to other femmes, and still others are also attracted to men and consider themselves bisexual." Some research has indicated that butches are more likely to be exclusively lesbian, while femmes are sometimes bisexual. In 2005, preliminary research conducted by Levitt and Bridges indicated that lesbians are more likely to identify as butch and have a more masculine gender expression than bisexual women. 4.5 percent of the bisexual women they studied identified as butch compared to the 30.1 percent of lesbians who did. Lesbians were more sexually attracted to women whose gender expressions contrasted theirs, and bisexual women were more sexually attracted to those whose gender expressions were more similar to theirs. Levitt and Bridges theorized that "this finding may be in part due to the different aesthetics that are available and popular within lesbian and bisexual communities."