de Montgeroult, Hélène 03/02/1764 - 05/20/1836

1764 in Lyon; † 1836 in Florence)

She was born in 1764 in Nyon as Hélène de Nervo. Later the family moved to Paris.

At the age of twelve (1776) she received piano lessons from Nicolas-Joseph Hüllmandel a pupil of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach who taught her his "elegant and correct style". This was followed by piano teachers Muzio Clementi (1784) and Johann Ladislaus Dussek (1786). The young aristocrat developed into a brilliant pianist and performed in the salons of Parisian society for example in the house of the Rochechouart family. It is not known from whom she learned to compose.

In 1784 she married the Marquis de Montgeroult (1736-1793) with whom she worked in the famous salons of the writer Madame de Staël and the painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun whose applause she soon won as an artist. Her husband died in Mantua in 1793. In 1797, she married the journalist Charles-Hyacinte His from whom she was divorced in 1803. She married a third time in 1820 to Edouard-Sophie Dunod de Charnage, Comte d'Empire, who died in 1826. She was the mother of a son Aimé Charles (* 1795) who was from her second husband His.

On 14 February 1793, as a result of the period of political upheaval during the French Revolution, Hélène de Montgeroult was for political reasons the victim of two opposing political parties within a short time: She was first imprisoned by the Austrians then indicted by the French Revolutionary Tribunal because of her noble origins and sentenced to the guillotine. But because of her pianistic skills she was pardoned.

In 1795 she was the first woman to be appointed professor at the newly founded ''Paris Conservatoire'' and began teaching piano as "Professeur de premièr classe".
In 1834 Montgeroult moved to Florence for climatic reasons where she died in May 1836.