Background
She was the daughter of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV"s celebrated maîtresse-en-titre.
She was the daughter of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV"s celebrated maîtresse-en-titre.
Alexandrine was nicknamed "Fanfan" by her family. She is remarked to have been very thin throughout her very short life, but healthy. Her mother became mistress of Louis XV in 1745.
At the age of six, Fanfan was put in the convent of the Assumption in the rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, a convent for girls of the nobility that served as her finishing school.
She was betrothed at age eight to the Duke of Picquigny, son of the Duke of Chaulnes, with the agreement that she would marry Picquigny at the age of twelve. On 4 June 1754, Fanfan took ill at the convent of the Assumption.
Charles-Guillaume Le Normant d"Étiolles rushed to her side, but Madame de Pompadour, who was at Versailles, could not come. Upon learning of her illness, Louis XV sent two of his own doctors to her side, but the child had already died of acute peritonitis when they arrived.
Fanfan was not yet ten years old.
Her grandfather, François Poisson, died eleven days later, on 25 June 1754, devastated by his dear Fanfan"s death.