A localized, insoluble, surfactant monolayer, spreading under the action of surface-tension gradients over a thin liquid film, has at its leading edge an integrable stress singularity which renders conventional thin-film approximations locally non-uniform. Here high-Reynolds-number asymptotics are used to explore the quasi-steady two-dimensional developing flow near the monolayer tip, assuming that gravity keeps the free surface almost flat, that weak ‘contaminant’ surfactant regularizes the singularity and that the monolayer spreads fast enough for inertial effects to be important in a region which is long compared to the film depth but which is short compared to the length of the monolayer. It is shown how downward displacement of the inviscid core flow by the subsurface viscous boundary layer yields a non-uniform pressure distribution which, when the monolayer is spreading fast enough for cross-stream pressure gradients to be significant at its tip, creates a short free-surface hump which is the thin-film version of a Reynolds ridge. The ridge and other singular flow structures are smoothed as the monolayer slows and levels of contaminant are increased. The conditions under which lubrication theory provides a uniformly accurate approximation for this class of surfactant-spreading flows are established.