“I was so sick of lesbians [being] treated like second class citizens. If I was going to do something I was going to do it so that we were represented as first-class, as having something nice for once.” Frances R. Stevens

In February 1990, 22-year-old lesbian bookstore clerk Frances or "Franco" Stevens took a leap of faith and developed a groundbreaking national lesbian magazine without financial backers.

Franco saw a desperate need for a specifically lesbian magazine, the kind she looked for after she came out a year earlier and heard other women request when she worked at A Different Light bookstore. After she decided to "stop complaining and do it herself,” Stevens diligently studied publishing and miraculously raised the funds she needed for the first issue at the horse races. When Stevens put a flier reading “Writers and photographers wanted for new lesbian magazine” at the bookstore, over 300 people responded. 

By 1995 Deneuve was the nation’s best selling lesbian magazine with a print run of 60,000 and mainstream advertisers. 

The magazine struggled to gain advertisers at first. The few ads in the 3,000 print first run included one for Stevens’ father’s computer company and one for the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, but it was a hit with readers. In April 1992 Deneuve moved from an editor’s living room into an office space in San Francisco's South of Market District, and hired their first employee managing editor Zelie Pollon.