Dr Margaret Steven was a distinguished historian and academic who spent much of her career at the Australian National University.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1933, she attended Inverness Royal Academy in Scotland and Fort Street Girls' High School in Sydney. She earned a BA (Hons) from the University of Sydney in 1956 and a PhD from The Australian National University in 1963. She was recognized as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London in 1969.

Commencing as a Research Assistant to Laurie Fitzhardinge at ANU in 1956 she took up a position as Senior Research Officer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 1958 to 1959, where she contributed to the publication "A Guide to Western Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles relating to South and South East Asia" by Oxford University Press in 1965. On return to Australia, her academic positions included Research Fellow in the Department of History at the Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS), ANU from 1959 to 1968 and from 1968 to 1975 the position of Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia. Returning to ANU, Margaret held the position of Visiting Fellow in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) from 1975 to 1978. She was a Research Editor for the Australian Dictionary of Biography, ANU from 1978 to 1996.
Margaret Steven contributed entries to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Biographical Dictionary of the Senate and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Her research work particularly focused on biography and the early colonial period of Australian history.