Born in 1869 near the town of Tours she married Armand Pourpe, a naval officer, after becoming pregnant by him while still at her convent school, aged 16. She soon left her violent husband to go to Paris. Their son, born 1886 was brought up by his grandmother. She was a dancer at the Folies Bergere in the 1890s and had occasional acting parts but it was in the demi-monde she rose to fame. As a runaway teenage mother, celebrity courtesan, and in later life a princess, a fundraiser for disabled children and, finally, a Dominican lay sister, Liane de Pougy led an extraordinary life. She died in Lausanne in December 1950, aged 81.
Sous le Second Empire émerge un nouveau groupe social, des femmes, qu’Alexandre Dumas fils nomme « les demi-mondaines ». Actrices ou danseuses, ces « cocottes » entretenues ont inspiré les écrivains les plus célèbres de leur temps : de la Coralie des Illusions perdues de Balzac...
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