Nashville, Tennessee - A woman is due to be executed in Tennessee for the first time in over 200 years on Wednesday, after her final bid for clemency was denied.

Christa Pike (50) was sentenced to death over the murder of a 19-year-old woman in 1995. At the time, Pike was 18 years old.

She is the only woman on Tennessee death row, with her execution due to go ahead after Tennessee Governor Bill Lee denied a last plea for clemency on Monday, according to media reports.

Pike was one of three teenagers who tortured and killed the 19-year-old near the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, but she was the only to have been sentenced to death, according to non-profit Death Penalty Information Center. Her boyfriend, aged 17 at the time, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Should Pike's execution take place as planned on Wednesday, it would be the first time since 1819 that a woman has been executed in Tennessee, according to the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide.

Activists have tried to stop the execution, with Amnesty International noting that Pike "endured rape, sexual and physical violence, abuse, and neglect" during childhood. UN experts have also called for the execution to be halted.

"I run through this execution every day in my heart," Pike told the New York Times.

The death penalty is legal in more than two dozen states, though it is often no longer carried out in practice. Only 2% of those on death row are women.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 18 women have been executed since 1976, representing about 1% of all executions.

This year, 28 people have been executed in the US up to September 24, according to the non-profit.

Two-thirds of adults in the US support the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to a recent representative survey by the Pew Research Center.

At the same time, 59% believe that the death penalty does not help to deter people from committing serious crimes.