The Quaid-E-Millath Government college for Women was founded as a school in the middle of the Eighteenth Century by Ghulam Ghouse Khan Bahadur, the last Nawab of the Carnatic. In 1901, the British Government bought Umdah Bagh, the present campus and raised the Madarasa Institution to the status of a college, calling it the Government Mohamedan College. His Excellency, Lord Erskine,Governor of Madras opened the present main building on November 29th, 1934, 25% of non-Muslims were admitted from 1938.

The college was renamed as Government Arts College in the year 1948-1949 and admission was open to all. The ever increasing demand for higher education for women made the Government of Tamilnadu to convert this college into a women's college in the year 1974 naming it as Quaid-E-Millath Government College for Women, after a prominent Muslim leader and philanthropist, retaining its Muslim heritage in this name. The college hostel is still known as the Umdah Bagh hostel.

This college, which began with five undergraduate courses and a few hundred students in 1974, now boasts of 12 UG courses, 3 vocational courses, 6 PG courses and 3 M.Phil courses in the I Shift and 3 UG courses in the II Shift, with a total strength of more than 4300 women students. The majority students belong to first generation learners.

Located in a sprawling campus of 30 acres, the college has colonial style buildings dating back to the 1930's as well as recent additions. It has suitably furnished class rooms, gallery halls numbering more than 10, well equipped laboratories, general and departmental libraries, museums, a herbarium, Computer laboratories and a vast play ground offering ample scope for students to develop their skills and personality.

This Government college offers an infrastructure, matched only by a few lavishly endowed private institutions while keeping the fee structure low enough to draw students from the economically weaker sections. The college has 158 highly qualified and experienced teachers. They are ably assisted by a team of 64 administrative staff and technicians.