Anne Marguérite Joséphine Henriette Rouillé de Marigny, Baroness Hyde de Neuville

Born in Sancerre, France, into an aristocratic family, Anne Marguérite Joséphine Henriette Rouillé de Marigny (1771–1849), who preferred to be called Henriette, received an education that probably included drawing lessons. At the fall of the Bastille in 1789, she and her father fled Paris for their country house, Château de L’Estang, where she began her artistic self-education under the wing of her grandmother and namesake, Anne Marguérite Rouillé de L’Etang, an intellectual and patron of the arts. In 1794, she married the handsome and hot-headed Jean Guillaume Hyde de Neuville, an ardent royalist who became involved in conspiracies to reinstate the Bourbon monarchy. At various times the couple was imprisoned and forced into hiding, sometimes under assorted aliases. The future baron was condemned as an outlaw in 1804 for his alleged participation in a plot to assassinate Napoleon.

Fearing for her husband’s safety, the independent baroness attempted to disprove the charges. In 1805, she took her cause directly to Napoleon, pursuing the French Army across Germany and Austria until finally obtaining an audience with him in Vienna. Impressed with her courage, the Emperor allowed the couple to go into exile. They arrived in New York in 1807 and stayed for seven years. During their second residency (1816–22), when her husband served as Minister Plenipotentiary, they lived primarily in Washington, DC, where Henriette became a celebrated hostess. After her return to France, the baroness seems to have retired her pen and watercolors, but held court at a tolerant, seasonal salon in Paris and lived with her husband at L’Estang, where

after several diplomatic postings the baron turned to managing his farm and vineyards.