Profile: Baroness Ashton, EU's new foreign minister

At no time in the eight-year voyage, via the House of Lords and the European Commission, has the Labour appointee, aged 53, ever been troubled by facing an election to public office.

Until departing for Brussels, Baroness Ashton of Upholland was best-known for getting the Lisbon Treaty, the successor to the EU Constitution, through the House of Lords in June 2008.

"I spent 76 hours of my life getting the Lisbon Treaty though the House of Lords. I would very much like to see it come into force," she said.

Few would have suspected that, less than 18 months later, as the treaty entered into force, she would be anointed as the EU's High Representative for foreign affairs, a job she had done so much to help create.

Opportunity first knocked when she parachuted into the post of trade commissioner when Lord Mandelson was recalled in Oct 2008 to play a leading domestic role as a Cabinet Minister. She was Britain's first female commissioner.

After just 13 months in the European Commission, and with only a transatlantic bananas deal and a tread agreement with South Korea to show for it, she will now become the EU executive's vice-president and Europe's foreign minister.

Holding a bunch of flowers from EU leaders, Lady Ashton hinted that her gender was more important than democratic credentials at her first press conference.

"I am proud of the fact that women have been recognised as being as capable, as able to do the senior jobs in Europe as any man. I am very proud of being a woman and holding that role," she said.

"Am I an ego on legs? No I am not. Do I want to be seen out there all the time saying everything? No, I don't. Judge me on what I do and I think you will be pleased and proud of me."

Lady Ashton was chairman of a county health authority between 1998 to 2001. She was elevated to the House of Lords as a Labour life peer in 1999.

Lady Ashton was made an education minister in 2001 before short junior stints at the departments of constitutional affairs and justice.

Her varied career began in an administrative capacity at the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the late 1970s. With a degree in economics from the University of London, she made her way in business, working first as a management consultant and then for the Business in the Community organisation, which encourages greater social responsibility by companies.

She was named Leader of Lords in Gordon Brown's first Cabinet in 2007. She is married to Peter Kellner, a political commentator and president of British polling company YouGov. She has two children and three stepchildren.