I would say Chun Li is one of my favorite female characters in all of video games.
Regardless, Street Fighter's always had a pretty fantastic cast of fighters. There's something about them that have made the one ninja guy, the green guy, the chinese kicker girl, and the dictator these sort of archetypes in our games. If someone parodies one of those characters you instantly know a ton about them.
I think that's the real success of Street Fighter. Mainstream crossover ability and the longevity of each fighter. Regardless of thousands of iterations of the same game, I think Street Fighter is one of the few titles that has last this long and could possibly double it.