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Born on March 16, 1822 in Bordeaux into a large family of artists.Her mother Sophie Marquis married Raymond Bonheur who was also her drawing teacher. Raymond painted landscapes of Bordeaux and portraits and instilled a love of art in all his children.

As a child when Rosa was struggling at school her mother used her love of drawing to her advantage. Asking Rosa to draw an animal for each of the letters of the alphabet was just the trick she needed. Her mother died when she was young and her school life suffered. Expelled twice her father finally took her out of school and focused on teaching her how to paint. 

Raymond specialized in Realism and to help Rosa he had their Paris home filled with animals. From squirrels and rabbits to ducks and sheep the young artist had all she needed to begin her life as a painter of animals. Once she needed more subjects she would visit farms in Levalois-Perret and the Bois de Boulogne. Rosa was lucky to have an artist as a father as few women were able to find teachers at the time. Spending her days in the Musée du Louvre as a copyist always being pulled to the masters paintings of animals. At 19 year she was already showing her pieces at the Paris Salon and selling her paintings to avid collectors. 

As a female painter in the 19th century she was able to do something few other women did. She became an international star. The copies of the Horse Fair were selling all over England and the United States and Empress Eugenie was also an avid fan. In 1865 Eugenie urged her husband for quite some time to award Rosa the Legion of Honor for her work and spreading French art around the world. He finally gave in with the stipulation that he would have nothing to do with it and it would be given without a formal ceremony. On June 10, 1865 Eugenie traveled to the Chateau de By and presented Rosa with the highest award a civilian could get. Anna would later paint her wearing the metal, today it is still in the Chateau de By. 

Listen to the newest episode of La Vie Creative - Paris History Avec A Hemingway today. 

More info and photos: https://www.claudinehemingway.com/paris-history-avec-a-hemingway-podcast-1

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Who is Doni Belau? Who is Doni Belau? An inveterate traveler, I’ve been to nearly 70 countries (and counting). I come alive when I travel, when I’m exploring, and when I’m seeing, tasting, and feeling something new. I love to help other women experience this sensation as I truly feel it helps us see a larger world of possibilities within ourselves. Girls’ Guide to Paris & Beyond is an invitation to travel with me to explore another part of the world while we explore another part of ourselves.

Before Girls’ Guide, I had a long career in television production, stayed at home when my kids were young (and am grateful for that), then tried to make a difference in the not-for-profit arena and politics. I started a not-for-profit in South Africa helping kids in a Capetown township with HIV – one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

I hail from Nebraska, but I’ve lived most of my adult life in New York. 20 years ago, we bought our first home in France; I’ve been trying to live there full-time ever since. However, I’m lucky enough to divide my time between Paris, Bordeaux, and New York thanks to a gracious husband.

I’m obsessed with food…gourmet Michelin star level meals to aligot at a street fair. I relish finding that unique place with a chef who really cares what he or she is putting on the plate. Plus, I’ll try anything once. Weirdest foods sampled to date: frog legs (very good~), escargot & foie gras (duh!), eland and zebra (in Africa), fermented shark (in Iceland – GROSS), and fried grasshoppers (tasty!).

I’ve been a brunette and a blond and blond is better! I try to stay fashion conscious but sometimes I just have to throw on the mom jeans. I believe in the motto “Never act your age!”. Oh, and I’m obsessed with gardens and flowers.

Author & Founder of
Girls’ Guide to Paris & Women’s Only Tours throughout France & Beyond
Paris Cocktails

Here are all of Doni’s trips, retreats and adventures in 2021 & 2022. https://girlsguidetoparis.com/trips-for-women/

Mention La Vie Creative and get 5% off (a savings up to $500) if you book any trip this month. Deadline March 31st 5pm central.

Code #laviecreative

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Artist Eva Gonzalez may not be as well known as her fellow female impressionist artists but she should be. 

Born on April 19, 1849, in Paris, her father Emmanuell Gonzalez was a Spanish novelist and playwright and her mother was a trained musician. With their creativity handed down to her at a very early age, she was drawn to painting and sketching. 

A chance meeting through artists Alfred Stevens in February 1869 would put her on the path to being a known artist. Stevens took Eva to the studio of Edouard Manet who at the time was obsessed with anything Spanish and Eve had the look he loved. He immediately wanted to paint her and took her in as his one and only ever student. 

Manet was going through a lot at the time. The critics were slamming him for Olympia and Dejeuner sur l’herbe and he was starting to pull himself away from the art world and turn into a shut-in. Meeting Eve was just what he needed. His first painting of her premiered at the Salon of 1870, titled Mademoiselle Eve Gonzalez. 

Like her teacher Manet, Emile Zola came to her defense writing pamphlets supporting her art and gaining her more attention. In 1874 she moved to a softer touch and from Manet’s style and continued to use her sister as her model. 

More info and photos: https://www.claudinehemingway.com/paris-history-avec-a-hemingway-podcast-1

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Marina Khorosh is a writer and copywriter living in New York City. Originally from Russia, she spent her twenties living in New York, after which she moved to Paris to study at Institut Français de la Mode. While in Paris, she launched a blog called Dbag Dating to share her Parisian dating exploits, which soon earned her a role as a writer of a French girl style column for Vogue.com. She was then approached by French publisher J'ai Lu to write a book based on her Parisian dating experiences. The book, Love in Translation, was released in September 2020 and is a coming of age memoir of five years of Marina's life, relayed through 12 romantic encounters that shaped her along the way.
 
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Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was destined to be the mistress of the king. As a child, her mother took her to a fortune-teller who told the young girl that she would one day hold the heart of the king. From then on she was called Reinette, little queen.

Her mother set out from that moment to raise her to be a mistress and hired the best teachers to educate her in art, dancing, and the theater. In 1740 at the age of 19, she was married to Charles Guillaume, nephew of her guardian Tourneheim with one clause. They would be happily married and she would never leave him unless the king came calling. 

Poisson and her husband lived in the Chateau d’Etoiles where she would hold lavish Salons with Voltaire, Fontenelle, and Montesquieu in attendance. Her name began spreading all the way to court. Poisson heard that Louis XV hunted in the woods near their home and one day she dressed in a blue dress and took off in her pink carriage cutting right into his path. She did it again days later, this time in a pink dress and a blue carriage. 

She got the king's attention and in turn, he sent her venison as a gift, what a way to woo a girl. On February 24, 1745, she was invited to court to attend a masked ball. Dressed as Diane the huntress she floated through the ball and right into his arms. Three days later at the Hotel de Ville he publicly declared his love for her. 

As a commoner, it was frowned upon at court but easily fixed when Louis XV bought her the title, chateau, and the crest of the Marquise de Pompadour. Pompadour would become his most trusted advisor, even after their physical affair ended. 

While the mistresses of the kings were many, Pompadour should be remembered for her contribution to the arts through supporting artists and her own skills. From gemstone engraving to create books with her own printing press and the first royal porcelain factory in France. 

More info and photos: https://www.claudinehemingway.com/paris-history-avec-a-hemingway-podcast-1

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As a fifth-generation Texan, Sumner Hargrove began riding horses bareback at her family’s

ranch at the age of three! She went on to do her undergraduate degree magna cum laude at

Mary Baldwin College in Virginia in English Literature and Philosophy, followed by a master’s

in Public Policy and Public Finance from New York University. She then worked on Wall

Street as a municipal bond analyst and public finance officer for a Japanese bank. At the age

of 30, she decided to follow her dream since high school to move to Paris to study French

and see what else might happen along the way.

Second career pivot…she taught marketing, finance, and media in English at French business

schools and grandés écoles got married and had boy/girl twins, re-inventing herself again

after their births as a managing editor in the marketing department of a French software

firm as well as at the headquarters of a major French services company, in charge of internal

communications for the 400+ marketing staff around the world.

Most recently, when her twins went to university four years ago, she decided it was “the

moment” to go back to school again, this time to fulfill a childhood dream to become an

interior decorator at last! She received a French diplôme d’état in interior decoration and

space design in 2017, founded her interior decorating agency, Flights of Fancy, in 2018 and

has never looked back!

You can find out more about Sumner Hargrove, the Founder and Creative Director of Flights of Fancy, at www.flights-of-fancy.paris or write her at [email protected]. In addition, her videos are on her channel on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYctsP-8Kef48-gZADxKdPg and her Instagram account is under Sumner Hargrove.

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Martha Gelhorn, born in St Louis in 1908 to two parents that wanted much more for their daughter than the role women were to play at the time. Her father George was a doctor and her mother Edna was politically active in the suffrage movement and also served as a president of Bryn Mawr. Her father pulled her out of school as soon as he learned the nuns had covered the pictures of the female anatomy and took her to the Mary Institute where her mother was the president. It was also the school of another young girl that had been there a few years before, Hadley Richardson.

After attending Bryn Mawr for one year she decided to leave and chase her career as a writer. In 1930 it would take her to Paris where she would later meet Bertrand de Jouvenal who had also been the stepson and lover of Colette. Martha was not content to stay in one place too long. She became one of the first female war correspondents after she traveled the US documenting the Depression for President Roosevelt. Never one to shy away from conflict she was able to bring the stories in a way nobody else did. Gelhorn would find the real story and tell it from a raw and sympathetic point of view that touched her readers. Of course many know her name from being the third wife of Ernest Hemingway.

Their relationship started out as two writers always chasing the excitement but ended from jealousy and her need to never sit still. Gelhorn never wanted to be the postscript in his biography, nor should she be.  Gelhorn was an inspiring and amazing woman. The only woman on the beaches of Normandy on D-day, witness to the destruction of Hitler and a front seat to the Spanish Civil war bringing the world to people in a way few did at the time. That is what she should be remembered for.

More info and photos: https://www.claudinehemingway.com/paris-history-avec-a-hemingway-podcast-1

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Janet Skeslien Charles grew up on the plains of Montana. She spent two years in Odessa, Ukraine, as a Soros Teaching Fellow. She has taught English, French, and Creative writing in Ukraine, Montana, and France. She enjoys reading, spending time with family, and researching her new novel. 

The backdrop of her debut novel MOONLIGHT IN ODESSA is the booming business of email-order brides, an industry where love and marriage meet sex and commerce. It was chosen as a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Debut as well as a book of the month in National Geographic Traveler. It was published in 12 languages.

Her second novel THE PARIS LIBRARY is based on the true story of the courageous librarians at the American Library in Paris during World War II. Janet learned about the story when she worked at the Library. It is published in 26 languages.

Check out her new book here! 

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Anne de Rochechouart de Montemart may not jump to your mind but her great grandmother does. While you would think the great-granddaughter of Veuve Clicquot would sit back sipping her family champagne and counting all her money, that wasn’t the life that Anne wanted. 

The apple of her great grandmother's eye, they would remain close her entire life and would also inherit the bulk of her estate. Anne used her money and her prestige to engage in politics and charities bringing to light causes that were mostly ignored. 

Anything she wanted to do she did. In 1898 when Emile Delahayes built a new car she had to have one. She was the first woman in France to have a driver's license and also the first to get a speeding ticket. She was going 9 mph in a 7.5 mph zone, the horror. When women weren’t allowed in the auto club, she created her own. 

During World War I, she donated funds and also properties for the French to create makeshift hospitals. Anne didn’t stop there. At 70 years old she obtained her nurse's license so she could help the doctors. Anne’s philanthropy would make her great grandmother proud, just one more reason to enjoy that glass of Veuve Clicquot.

More info and photos: https://www.claudinehemingway.com/paris-history-avec-a-hemingway-podcast-1

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At Adrienne’s 10th birthday, every guest went home with a ruby ball cactus as their party favor. Although Adrienne preferred otherwise, it was inevitable. Every year party guests left her birthday with plants in their arms. It was because both of her parents worked in the horticulture industry in San Diego, California. 

Born on Valentine’s Day, Adrienne literally grew up in the flowers. Her days were spent as a young girl visiting her dad at work in the greenhouses and exploring botanical gardens & flower shops weekly with her mom.

When Adrienne was 21 she visited Europe for the first time during a college trip. She fell in love with a boy in the south of France the second she laid eyes on him on his grandparent's balcony. After two years of long-distance, she decided to move to Paris bringing their love to the same city for the first time. 

- In 2016 she moved to Paris and discovered her favorite flower shop in the 11th arrondissement down the street from her apartment.  

-In 2018 she started working at said flower shop the day after receiving her work VISA.

-In 2020 she bought the most magical flower shop in Paris called L’Arrosoir which has existed for over 100 years. 

Now Adrienne is the “Patrone” of her flower shop in Paris and the boss of four French girls. Every day brings a new challenge as a shop owner, and especially during a global pandemic but it’s Paris and la vie est belle.

If you live in Paris and would like to order a Valentine's day gift bag or check out Adrienne's shop in general here is her website: https://larrosoirparis.com/

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