Madame Campan (1752–1822)

Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan, née Genet, was born in Paris and well educated, learning English and Italian by age 15. In 1770, she became a femme de chambre to Marie Antoinette, then the dauphine, later queen of France. Four years later, she married Pierre-Dominique-François Berthollet, known as Campan, with whom she had two sons; but the marriage was unhappy and the couple separated. After the French royal family was removed from the Tuileries in 1792, Madame Campan had to find a way to support her family. So she started a girls' school in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Germain that prospered as the daughters of former aristocrats came as pupils. She also wrote a famous memoir of her years as a lady-in-waiting and friend of Marie Antoinette.