Liane de Pougy (1869–1950)

Liane de Pougy was born Anne-Marie Chassaigne in a middle-class French family, and received a convent education. At age 16, she married a naval officer and had a child, but her husband was abusive, and she left him after two years. She moved to Paris, changed her name, danced in the chorus of the Folies Bergère cabaret, and established herself as a much sought-after courtesan. In 1899, she met the first great love of her life, Natalie Clifford Barney, a wealthy American expatriate and writer. The two women caused a scandal with their open affair, at the end of which Liane published a tell-all novel, Idylle Saphique (1901); it was a bestseller. Liane then met her second great love, Georges Ghika, a prince from a old noble Romanian family; he was several years her junior. In 1910, the couple married, and Liane changed her name again to Anne-Marie Ghika and was known as Princess Ghika. The marriage lasted about 16 years. In 1945, Liane joined a Dominican Order of nuns in Lausanne, Switzerland as a lay sister, and worked at the Asylum of Saint Agnes, a home for physically and mentally disabled abandoned children. She published a couple of light tales called L'Insaisissable and La Mauvaise part-Myrrhille. After her death, her diaries were published in English as My Blue Notebooks.