People, I think the topic starter is not talking about empowered or mean-looking females. He’s talking about females with actually strong/athletic looking physiques. Some of the characters mentioned are the polar opposite to that.
In Street Fighter, the strongest looking female ever was Chun Li in SFA; in addition to her usual lower body she had her arms comparable to Feilong’s. Not even Makoto in SF4 reaches that level.
By the way, I made a mod for SF4 which tries to give Chun Li her old SFA physique for her third alt, if you are interested.
We also have Cammy, and in the expanded SF universe there is Black Widow from Slammasters. Maki looked reasonably strong in Final Fight 2.
Vanessa Lewis from VF4 comes to mind. It’s a pity that they had to nerf and wash her out.
Tekken is special in that many females have broad shoulders but they are not particularly strong looking, especially noticeable on Christie. I guess that they do this to make animation sharing easier among skeletons rather than being a conscious design choice. While none of them look remarkably strong, the closest are probably Julia, Nina and Asuka.
King of Fighters has Blue Mary and Leona with often athletic looks, although official weights say otherwise (the same happens with Cammy). King also may qualify because we don’t actually get to see her body. Mai looked somewhat athletic in Real Bout Special and RB2.
Rila in Breakers is quite a female Blanka, and Tia has reasonably thick limbs ingame.
Tobal has Mary Ivonskaya. Power Instinct has Angela Belti.
Liu Yungmie from Fighter’s History Dynamite is basically Chun Li with different clothes.
Females in Weaponlord looked very strong, especially Jen-Tai.
Taki from SoulCalibur also looks quite fit depending on art direction of each particular game.
Post-Hecatom Edit: lol, I forgot Mitsuko.
