Eleanor Roosevelt, who spent 12 years in the White House as first lady and traveled the world as a human-rights advocate, is the front-runner for the new face of the $10 bill, according to a poll.

Released on Wednesday, results from a Marist poll show that 27 percent of those surveyed would choose Mrs. Roosevelt. Harriet Tubman, the African-American abolitionist, was the second choice, with 17 percent. Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who served as a translator and guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition, garnered 13 percent of the vote.

A New York Times obituary for Mrs. Roosevelt in 1962 described her as an energetic first lady to Franklin D. Roosevelt — her personality was both a strength and a burden, and, at first, her liveliness prompted criticism and jokes. Over the years, through her involvement with the United Nations and her work for civil rights, admiration for her deepened.

“She had become not only the wife and widow of a towering President,” the obituary read, “but a noble personality in herself.”