她
tā · HSK 1
she
👩 女 (woman) + 也 (also) — the 'woman' version of 他 (he)
她 was coined in the early 20th century by adding the 女 (woman) radical to 他 (he/him), creating a dedicated female third-person pronoun. Same sound tā, different written form.
她 — woman radical 女 + 也
她 is a modern semantic-phonetic compound: 女 (woman) gives the meaning, while 也 supplies the sound. It was coined in the early 20th century by writer Liu Bannong to translate the English pronoun 'she'; before then, 他 was used for all third-person pronouns regardless of gender.