Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. was organized at Howard University on January 16, 1920 as the result of encouragement given to the five founders by Charles Taylor and Langston Taylor who are members of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. Arizona Cleaver, Myrtle Tyler, Viola Tyler, Pearl Neal, and Fannie Pettie are the five founders of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. The five women believed that sorority elitism and socializing overshadowed the real mission for progressive organizations and failed to address fully the societal mores, ills, prejudices, and poverty affecting humanity in general as well as the black community. The founders collectively had an ideal to create a sorority that would directly effect positve change and chart an awareness among their people and  encourage the highest standards of scholastic achievements, and foster a greater sense of unity among its memebrs through sisterhood. The newly established organization predicated on the percepts of Scholarship, Service, Sisterly Love, and Finer Womanhood. It was the ideal of the Founders to reach college women in all parts of the country who were sorority minded and desired to follow the founding principles of the organization.

        Since it's inception, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. has chronicled a number of "firsts" among established Black fraternities and sororities. In addition to being the only sisterhood constitutionally bound to a fraternity (Phi Beta Sigma). The sorority was the first to charter International Chapters in West Africa and Germany, to form adult and youth auxillary groups, the  Amicae, Archonettes, Amicettes and Pearlettes,  to organize its internal affairs within a central national office administered by a paid staff. The sorority ideals of Service, Scholarship, Sisterly Love + Finer Womanhood are reflected in the organization's national programs for which its members and auxillary groups provide numerous hours of voluntary services to staff community outreach programs, fund scholarships, support organized charities and promote legislation for social and civic changes.

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