Murder is one of the most severe felonies and as such attracts great attention from the public and from scientists trying to find the causes leading to it. Murders committed by women are less researched and studied compared to those committed by men because they form a smaller part of the total criminality. Research has shown that women are less likely to commit violent crimes and that murders committed by women tend to be consequences of long-term domestic violence. The main goal of this thesis is to establish the personal and criminological characteristics of women who have committed family murders by examining relevant foreign and Croatian literature and by conducting research on a sample of female prisoners at Požega Penitentiary who have been sentenced for family murder. The specific goal is to establish whether there are differences in the personal and criminological characteristics of the perpetrators depending on whether the felony was committed at the expense of their husbands or their children. The research conducted includes all women convicted of murder, higher-degree murder and manslaughter as per the criminal law of the Republic of Croatia from 1980 to 2013, and 104 female perpetrators of family murder from the total sample were chosen for further analysis of characteristics. The results show that the personality characteristics of the perpetrators whose victims were their husbands differ from that of the perpetrators whose victims were their children only in psychopathic personality characteristics, which were statistically more present among perpetrators of the latter kind. Criminological characteristics of the perpetrators differ in regard to method and location of the criminal offense, main motive of the offense, attempt of suicide after the offense, gender and age of the victim, intoxication of the victim and perpetrator at the time of the offense, and whether the actions of the perpretator were triggered by the victim. The results of the study can serve as a basis for planning a program for preventing fatal domestic violence committed by women, for further establishing common characteristics with respect to the type of victim, and for further scientific research which would establish whether these conclusions hold true for the whole population of female perpetrators.