This paper focuses on women and the early period of the modern missionary movement from the late eighteenth century to the 1830s, considering links between the anti-slavery campaigns and the development of overseas missions within a framework of early twenty-first century understandings of modernity. There are three sections. The first discusses women's writing in relation to anti-slavery, the second examines the shift from women's anti-slavery activism at home to broader activities at home and overseas, while the third focuses on the London-based Female Education Society and its role as an organising body for women in educational work overseas. Connecting the three sections is an understanding of women's lives in a changing world, caught up in Britain's expanding empire. The women described here were mostly from Christian families in a time when religious affiliation was in a state of flux. This paper argues that women's interest in anti-slavery became enmeshed with a desire to bring education to those who would attain freedom and was encompassed in broader understandings of liberty and enlightenment. The desire to educate expanded to include the “heathen” in many parts of the world, and this paralleled the burgeoning of modern missions.