Keiko Fukuda, who learned judo from its inventor and went on to become the sport’s highest-ranked woman, died on Feb. 9 at her home in San Francisco. She was 99.

Her death was confirmed by Shelley Fernandez, who lived with her and helped run Soko Joshi Judo Club, a center of martials, or dojo, in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco, where Fukuda taught for more than 40 years.

Ms. Fukuda was a living link to her sport’s formation. Her grandfather Fukuda Hachinosuke was a Japanese samurai and jujitsu master who died in 1880. One of his last students, Kano Jigoro, began developing judo in the early 1880s as an offshoot of jujitsu, combining balance and strength with holding and throwing techniques.

In the early 1930s Kano, as he was known, invited Ms. Fukuda, then 21 and standing less than five feet tall, to join a new judo class for women at the school he founded in Tokyo, called the Kodokan. It was rare for women to learn judo at the time.