List of Famous people born in Havana Province, Cuba

Zoé Valdés is a Cuban novelist, poet, scriptwriter, film director and blogger. She studied at the Instituto Superior Pedagógico Enrique José Varona, but did not graduate. From 1984 to 1988, she worked for the Delegación de Cuba at UNESCO in Paris and in the Oficina Cultural de la Misión de Cuba in Paris. From 1990 to 1995, she was an editor of the magazine Cine Cubano. She lives with her daughter in Paris. She has been married three times: with Cuban writer Manuel Pereira Quintero, Cuban government official José Antonio González and Cuban independent filmmaker Ricardo Vega.

María Rosa Menocal was a Cuban-born scholar of medieval culture and history and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. Menocal earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1986, she taught Romance philology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Roberto Fernández Retamar was a Cuban poet, essayist, literary critic and President of the Casa de las Américas. In his role as President of the organization, Fernández also served on the Council of State of Cuba. An early close confidant of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, he was a central figure in Cuba from the 1959 Revolution until his death in 2019. Fernández also wrote over a dozen major collections of verse and founded the Casa de las Americas cultural magazine.

María Irene Fornés was a Cuban-American playwright and director, notable in off-off-Broadway in the 1960s. She was first inspired to write while living with Susan Sontag, whom she encouraged at a difficult moment in Sontag’s own writing career. Fornés’ plays range widely in subject-matter, but often relate to the impact of economic conditions on personal relationships. Fornés won many Obie Theatre Awards and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

John Henry Sununu is an American politician who was the 75th Governor of New Hampshire (1983–1989) and later White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush. He is the father of John E. Sununu, the former United States Senator from New Hampshire, and Christopher Sununu, the current governor of New Hampshire. Sununu was the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party from 2009 to 2011. Sununu prevented the signing of a 67-nation commitment to freeze carbon dioxide emissions at the 1987 Noordwijk Climate Conference.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is a politician and lobbyist from Miami, Florida, who represented Florida's 27th congressional district from 1989 to 2019. By the end of her tenure, she was the most senior U.S. Representative from Florida. She was Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 2011–2013. In 1989, Ros-Lehtinen won a special election and became the first Cuban American and Latina elected to Congress. She was also the first Republican woman elected to the House from Florida. Ros-Lehtinen gave the first Republican response to the State of the Union address in Spanish in 2011, and gave the third in 2014.

Bishop Manuel Hilario de Céspedes y García Menocal is the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Matanzas.