The statue was unveiled in north London, near the site where Mary Wollstonecraft set up a girls' boarding school.
It is made by Maggi Hambling and depicts a naked woman who takes shape at the top of what the artist calls "a tower of female forms".
Ten-year campaign for a statue
Already in 2010, the fundraising began to raise the 143,000 pounds needed to finance the work.
The initiator Bee Rowlatt tells The Guardian that she has been fixated on the idea of why the philosopher, author and women's rights activist Wollstonecraft was not better known to the public.
The artwork has received criticism
But the statue met with strong reactions.
For example, protesters covered the naked body on Tuesday night.
Author Tracy King, who was involved in the work for the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, thinks it is a strange choice to let Mary Wollstonecraft's deeds and significance be represented by a naked, small woman.
- In the UK, there are only 26 statues of named women depicted for their deed.
Now it's more about nudity, instead of Wollstonecraft's legacy.
I have a hard time seeing school classes visit this statue and be inspired by her.
It is an educational opportunity that they sabotage, she says.
The artist responds to the criticism
Artist Maggi Hambling tells the BBC that many of the critics miss an important detail, that the statue does not represent Mary Wollstonecraft, but is made for her.
And the idea of the small, naked woman is that it does not have to be dominant to be powerful.
- I do not agree with her about it, says Tracy King and continues:
- It is the very point of feminism, that we know that women are diminished in public, that we are not seen in the same way as men.
Embracing it makes me think that she has not done enough research to understand what it means to make a woman naked and small when it is supposed to represent something.