Léonie D'Aunet (1820–1879)

Marie Denise Léonie Thévenot d’Aunet, known as Léonie, was born in Paris into a family of the minor French nobility. Her parents were Auguste-François-Michel Thévenot d'Aunet and his wife Henriette-Josephine d'Orémieulx. She had a good education and grew up into a beautiful, witty, and cultured young woman. In 1835, she met François-Auguste Biard, a painter 20 years her senior; they became lovers in 1838. At age 19, she accompanied him on a scientific expedition aboard the ship La Recherche to Spitsbergen, an island in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Norway on which she was the only woman. They married in Paris in 1840, shortly after their return. She made her literary debut with letters published in serial form in the Revue de Paris, which made her famous. The letters were later collected into a volume called Voyage d’une femme au Spitzberg (1855) which was reprinted numerous times. She frequented the celebrated Parisian salon of Fortunée Hamelin, which is probably where she met Victor Hugo in 1843. They fell in love, inspiring some of his most beautiful love poems. Biard made a formal complaint to the police and surprised the couple together at a hotel: she was separated from her two children, disgraced, and imprisoned for adultery for several months. Afterwards, she obtained an annulment or legal separation (divorce was still illegal in France) from her husband and became a journalist and novelist under her maiden name. After publishing her book about Spitsbergen, she wrote novels such as Un Mariage en province (A Marriage in the Provinces, 1856), Une Vengeance (A Vengeance, 1857), and l’Héritage du marquis d’Elsigny (The Legacy of the Marquis d'Elsigny, 1863). Her play Jane Osborn was produced at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin in 1856. She also wrote for periodicals such as La Revue de Paris, Le Siècle, Le Courrier de Paris, and Les Modes, at times using the pen name "Thérèse de Blaru." She stayed in communications with Hugo after he went into political exile in 1851 until her death.