Who is Barbara (test image)
The appeal of this image is obviously in the numerous lines, which test the aliasing properties of resizing, denoising, and super-resolution algorithms.

It seems Allen Gersho is the source, according to the Acknowledgement section of Embedded image coding using zerotrees of wavelet coefficients



If you want more specific information you could ask him or one of his students from the early 90s, when this image first seems to have appeared.