Bellatrix is Gamma Orionis, apparent magnitude 1.6, at roughly 250 light years. It is a hot blue giant of spectral type B2, one of the four bright stars that frame the great rectangle of Orion, marking the hunter's left shoulder opposite the redder Betelgeuse. Being hot and massive, it is short-lived by stellar standards and will end as a large white dwarf or in a lesser explosion. The Latin name means the female warrior, and it is often called the Amazon star, an unusually martial and feminine label among the constellation's otherwise male figures.
At around 250 light years and burning through its hydrogen far faster than the Sun despite its youth, Bellatrix is expected to end its life within the next few tens of millions of years, either shedding its outer layers to leave a massive white dwarf or, if its mass proves high enough at the end, collapsing in a supernova, the fate reserved for the more massive of Orion's hot blue stars. Bellatrix's Latin name and Amazon association are attested from antiquity, unlike the elaborate personality delineation layered onto it in the nineteenth century, so the name itself, unusually among the bright stars in this catalogue, is genuinely as old as its reputation for menace.
Sources AstronomyAndrew Fraknoi, David Morrison, and Sidney C. Wolff (OpenStax) with Almagest (Mathematike Syntaxis)Claudius Ptolemy