Liane de Pougy
(1869 - 1950) France
Writer, courtesan, princess
Liane de Pougy was born in Brittany as Anne Marie de Chassaigne. After her education in a convent, her middle class parents secured their sixteen-year-old daughter's future by an arranged marriage to a "suitable" husband. The groom turned out to be a brute and physically abused her to the degree that she wore scars across her breasts for the rest of her life. After two years of this, she ran off to Paris.
Upon her arrival in Paris, the beautiful eighteen year old changed her name to Liane. As a dancer, Liane's beauty opened many doors to the music halls of Paris. Soft, elegant and refined, Liane de Pougy enraptured all Paris especially with her notorious rivalry with Caroline "La Belle" Otero that generated long and true duels of beauty, jewels, covered carts and loving between the two dancers.
Along the way, Liane, established a clientele of rich and famous lovers who showered her with expensive gifts of jewels, carriages and summer homes in the country. At the height of her career in 1910, Liane met her second great love, a Romanian Prince named Georges Ghika. They married. She changed her name back to Anne-Marie Ghika but known as Princess Ghika. The marriage lasted for sixteen years. By this time the penniless Georges met a much younger woman and left. They never divorced.
Around 1945, after the death of her estranged husband, the seventy-six year old, Liane retired from her former life and joined a convent of nuns, spending her time caring for disabled and mentally challenged children who had been abandoned. Liane de Pougy died in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Liane de Pougy and Suzanne Dorval
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