Louise de Broglie d'Haussonville (1818–1882)

Louise Albertine, princesse de Broglie, was born into a famous aristocratic family. She was the daughter of Albertine, Baroness Staël von Holstein, and her husband Victor de Broglie, 3rd Duke de Broglie, a statesman and diplomat. Her maternal grandmother was the famed salonnière and writer Germaine de Staël. She was born in her grandmother's Château de Coppet in Switzerland, the residence made famous through Madame de Staël's writing. She would eventually inherit the Coppet estate and was buried there. Louise had a highly cultured education and upbringing and loved literature and music, opera in particular—in her famous portrait by Ingres, he included her opera glasses. In 1836, at age 18, she married Joseph d'Haussonville, an historian and future member of the French National Assembly, becoming Louise de Cléron, viscomtesse and later comtesse d'Haussonville. The couple lived in Paris and had three children. Louise published several biographies: on the Irish nationalist Robert Emmet, 1858; on Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, Souvenirs d'une demoiselle d'honneur de Mme la duchesse de Bourgogne (1861); Marguerite de Valois reine de Navarre (1870); and a two-volume biography of Lord Byron called La Jeunesse de Lord Byron and Les Dernières Années de Lord Byron. In 1875, she published C.-A. Sainte-Beuve: sa vie et ses oeuvres. Her lovely 1845 portrait by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, often copied, now hangs in the Frick Collection in New York City.