Beautiful female sounding gong? (5)
I believe the answer is:
belle
'beautiful female' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'sounding gong?' is the wordplay.
'sounding' shows a homophone (sound like).
'gong?' becomes 'bell' ('bell' can be a synonym of 'gong').
'bell' is a homophone of 'BELLE'.
(Other definitions for belle that I've seen before include "Handsome lady of the Ball?" , "Most attractive girl" , "dish" , "Girl who's fetching" , "Pretty girl" .)