Hélène de Zuylen de Nyevelt (1863–1947)

Hélène de Zuylen de Nyevelt, née de Rothschild, also known as Hélène van Zuylen, was born in Paris, a member of the French Rothschild banking family. She was the only child of Baron Salomon James de Rothschild and his wife Adèle von Rothschild, a German-born cousin. Her father died when she was a baby, and she was raised by her strict mother. In 1887, Hélène married Baron Etienne van Zuylen van Nyevelt, a Belgian Catholic aristocrat, over the objections of her mother, who disinherited her from the family fortune. The couple had two sons. Hélène wrote poems, short stories, novels, and plays, many in collaboration with Renée Vivien (pen name of Pauline Mary Tarn), her lover. Some of their joint works were published under the nom de plume Paule Riversdale. Under her own name, Hélène published independent works, including the plays La Mascarade Interrompue (The Interrupted Mascarade, 1906) and Beryl (1908), and the novels La Dernière étreinte (The Last Embrace, 1912) and L'Enjoleuse (The Coaxer, 1914). Hélène's husband was one of the founders of the Automobile Club de France, and she became a pioneering female auto racer. She was the first woman to compete in an international motor race when she participated in the 1898 Paris–Amsterdam–Paris Trail. In 1935, she founded the Prix Renée Vivien, an annual French literary prize given to women poets at the beginning of their career.