Career
In an incident around 1788, Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, presented Duthé to his fifteen-year-old son Philippe (later King Louis Philippe I) to "learn some facts of life." When she was later seen in Philippe"s royal carriage on the Champs-Élysées, some young aristocrats took offense, as normally only princes rode in royal carriages. They sang a song set to a popular tune using the lyrics "Louisiana Duthé a dû téter", roughly translated as "Louisiana Duthé must have suckled royally."
In Parisian society Duthé developed a certain "reputation by adopting the habit of pausing for extended periods of time before speaking." She appeared not only stupid, but dumb in the literal sense. This inspired a one-act satire about her called Les Curiosités de la Foire (Paris 1775) that "kept Paris laughing for weeks." Although the origin of the stereotype of the dumb blonde is not entirely clear, cultural historian Joanna Pitman has noted that “Rosalie Duthé acquired the dubious honour of becoming the first officially recorded dumb blonde.”
Duthé was the supposed author of an autobiography, Galanteries d"une Demoiselle du Monde ou Souvénirs de Mlle.
Duthé (1833), though it has been claimed the real author was Baron Lamothe-Langone, who had known Duthé personally.
Rosalie Duthé died in 1830, probably around the age of 82 (see note). She is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Duthé was often requested by portrait painters for sittings, including for partial and full nudes. She was painted by François-Hubert Drouais in 1768, for a full-length portrait now held by the English branch of the Rothschild family.
Salbreux-Perin, better known as a miniaturist, made at least five portraits of Duthé, including a nude of her sitting modestly at the end of her bath that was intended for the bathroom of the Comte d"Artois at Bagatelle.
Another shows her lying naked on her bed, hair disheveled, now among the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Rheims. Antoine Vestier (1740–1824) painted the nude Portrait of Rosalie Duthé (ca 1780). Claude-Jean-Baptiste Hoin (1750–1817) painted Presumed portrait of Rosalie Duthé (date unknown).
Other painters who made portraits include Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Pierre-Paul Prud"honorary and Jacques-Antoine-Marie Lemoine.
Among the sculptors who created busts of her are Jean-Baptiste Defernex and Jean-Antoine Houdon. Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun painted Portrait of Mademoiselle Rosalie Duthé (1776), but she never took Duthé as a model and the painting is now considered a copy of someone else"s portrait.