Geneviève Halévy, later Geneviève Bizet and Geneviève Straus, was a French salonnière.
Background
Geneviève Halévy was the daughter of the composer Jacques-Fromental Halévy and his wife, née Léonie Rodrigues-Henriques, both Jewish. Geneviève Halévy"s youth was sad: she lost her father when she was 13 years old, her elder sister when she was 15 years old, and her mother suffered from periods of mental instability.
Career
She inspired Marcel Proust as a model for the Duchesse de Guermantes and Odette de Crécy in À la recherche du temps perdu. Bizet died suddenly of a heart attack, in 1875. This was known as Ludovic"s Thursdays (Les jeudis de Ludovic).
After a few years, she opened her own salon where distinguished society, such as Baron and Baronness Alphonse de Rothschild, Comtesse Potocka, Duchesse de Richelieu, Comtesse de Chevigné, née de Sade (another model for the Duchesse de Guermantes), et cetera
Many supporters of Dreyfus socialized at Mme Straus"s salon, amongst them Marcel Proust who was one of the first intellectuals to sign a petition in L"Aurore at the time of the Dreyfus Affair. After the Affair the salon became less prominent.
After 1910, Madame Straus became increasingly depressed, and cut herself off from society.
Her son committed suicide in 1922, a few weeks before Proust"s own death, and she died in 1926.