Alexandrine "Alexine" Pieternella Françoise Tinne (17 October 1835 – 1 August 1869) was a Dutch explorer in Africa who was the first European woman to attempt to cross the Sahara. She was an early photographer. Early life Alexandrine Tinne was the daughter of Philip Frederik Tinne and his second wife, Baroness Henriette van Capellen. Philip Tinne was a Dutch merchant, who was heavily involved in the transatlantic spice trade. He worked at coffee plantations in Demerara (a Dutch and then British colony in modern Guyana). In 1813, Philip Tinne became a full partner in the Liverpool firm Sandbach, Tinne & Company, a firm which from 1782 until the 1920s, owned ships and plantations, engaging in both slavery and the transport of slaves and sugar. Philip Tinne settled in England during the Napoleonic Wars and later returned to his native land, marrying Henriette, daughter of a Dutch Vice-Admiral, Theodorus Frederik van Capellen, and Petronella de Lange, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Sofia.Alexandrine Tinne was born when Philip was sixty-three. Alexandrine Tinne was tutored at home and showed proficiency at painting, piano, languages, photography and geography. Her father died when she was ten years old. The immense wealth of her father, much of which was amassed due to his activities in the spice and sugar trade (when slavery was abolished in 1833, his company was awarded £150,452, the second-largest payment made to any mercantile concern), resulted in the young girl becoming the richest female in the Netherlands. Tinne started experimenting with photography in her home town of The Hague and its harbour Scheveningen. She worked with several commercial photographers: Robert Jefferson Bingham (who visited The Hague), Francis Frith (whom she met in Egypt) and the J. Geiser photostudio in Algiers. Africa Accompanied by her mother Harriette and her aunt, Alexandrine Tinne left Europe in the summer of 1861 for the White Nile region. After a short stay at Khartoum, the party traveled up the White Nile and became the first European women to reach Gondokoro.Alexandrine Tinne fell ill and they were forced to return, reaching Khartoum on 20 November. Directly after their return, Theodor von Heuglin and Hermann Steudner met the Tinnes and the four of them planned to travel to the Bahr-el-Ghazal, a tributary of the White Nile, to reach the countries of the 'Niam-Niam' (Azande). Heuglin and Steudner left Khartoum on 25 January, ahead of the rest of the expedition; the