20 Famous Mistresses Whose Wealth Came With A Price

Lola Montez was an Irishwoman who came to Europe as Eliza Gilbert and pretended to be a Spanish dancer. She came to Munich in 1846 as the mistress of 60-year-old King Ludwig I of Bavaria. He made her Countess of Landsfeld, bought her a palace, and gave her an annuity of 20,000 gulden a year. Her political meddling angered Bavarians and led to student riots, forcing her to leave the city in February 1848. Ludwig revoked her citizenship a few weeks later and abdicated shortly thereafter. Montez survived, spending her last years abroad.

In 1745, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, better known as the Marquise de Pompadour, became the official chief mistress of King Louis XV of France. Though the king gave her many properties, including the Château de Bellevue, she paid for the Château de Menars with money she’d acquired on her own, as well as for the Sèvres porcelain works. Louis XV commissioned the Petit Trianon during her lifetime, but it wasn’t completed until after she died.

Nell Gwyn, born Eleanor Gwyn, began as a simple orange seller in London during the Restoration period before becoming a successful comic actress, whose charm attracted the attention of Charles II of England. Charles commissioned the building of Burford House for her just outside Windsor and gave her an annuity of more than £1,500. Their son, Charles Beauclerk, later became the Duke of St Albans. On his deathbed, Charles instructed his brother to “Let not poor Nelly starve.” She kept receiving her annuity until she died, still without being granted a title of her own.

Caroline Lacroix was born Blanche Delacroix and was a French teenager aged 16 when she became the mistress of King Leopold II of Belgium in 1899. Leopold, who privately ran and cashed in on the brutal Congo Free State, gave her a Riviera estate that later became known as Villa La Leopolda, along with millions in Congolese bonds. Five days before his death in 1909, he married her in a religious ceremony, but under Belgian law the pair had to get married civilly first, which they never did. Therefore, Caroline was not actually queen consort.

Jeanne Bécu, daughter of a seamstress, became Countess du Barry and the last official mistress of King Louis XV of France in 1768. He presented her with the Château de Louveciennes and millions in gemstones. Once, jewelers commissioned a diamond necklace they hoped Louis would buy for her, but he died before he could make the purchase, so she never owned or wore the necklace. When the Revolution broke out, her ostentatious display of the riches granted by the king made her an enemy of the state, and she was beheaded on the guillotine in 1793.

Diane de Poitiers was the favorite and counselor of Henry II of France until his death in 1559. Henry gifted her the Château de Chenonceau, named her the Duchess of Valentinois, and kept the French Crown Jewels in her possession. When he died, his wife, Catherine de’ Medici, compelled her to surrender Chenonceau and the crown jewels in exchange for the tiny Château de Chaumont. Diane lived out the rest of her days in comfort in her own château.

In 1444, Charles VII of France acknowledged Agnès Sorel, a former lady-in-waiting, as his mistress, the first woman to officially hold that position at the French court. He bestowed upon her the lands of Issoudun and Loches, as well as the Château de Beauté-sur-Marne (which led to her being called “Dame de Beauté”). Agnès died young, at the age of 28, in 1450. She was exhumed in 2005 and determined to have died from a dose of mercury so high it would have been fatal. However, historians disagree on whether someone poisoned her or if it was a medical accident.

In 1898, Alice Keppel became the main mistress of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, who would go on to become King Edward VII. Since her own husband had very little money, Edward introduced her to his banker friend, Sir Ernest Cassel. He looked after her fortune, including a parcel of shares in a rubber company that made her a handsome profit of £50,000. She used that money to purchase Villa l’Ombrellino in Florence in 1925, where she remained for the rest of her life.

In 1856, at age 18, Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, was dispatched to Paris by her cousin, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, a Piedmontese minister. She was sent to charm the emperor of France, Napoleon III, into supporting the movement for a united Italy. For her two years as Napoleon’s mistress, she was reportedly paid as much as 10,000 francs a month, given a home in Passy, and presented with jewels. While Cavour handled the real politics, Oldoini established another, more personal, claim to history: she became one of the most photographed women of her era, collaborating closely with a leading Paris studio on her portraits.

Born into destitution in Moscow, Esther Lachmann became “La Païva” in Paris. In 1852, she met the Prussian mining magnate Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck, who built her the Hôtel de la Païva on the Champs-Élysées and purchased for her famous jewels once owned by Empress Eugénie. They married in 1871. Upon her death in 1884, she was buried like any other person, though there’s a persistent rumor that her widower had her embalmed in alcohol.

Harriet Howard, an Englishwoman with a fortune of her own built up by previous lovers, met Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1846 and provided much of the funding for his political efforts and the 1851 coup in France. In 1852, she bought the Château de Beauregard for herself, using her own funds. When Louis-Napoléon later became Emperor Napoleon III, he paid back her loans with high interest, and in 1853 gave her the title of Countess of Beauregard.

In 1670, Louise de Kérouaille, a French noblewoman, came to the English court as a maid of honor. She was secretly supported by King Louis XIV of France to further French interests with King Charles II of England. She became Charles’ principal mistress, and he created her Duchess of Portsmouth in 1673, with a pension of more than £10,000 per annum. Louis XIV later gave her the French Duchy of Aubigny, and she founded the Richmond ducal line.

Barbara Palmer, née Barbara Villiers, became the chief mistress of King Charles II of England following his restoration in 1660. In 1670, Charles made her the Duchess of Cleveland and presented her with Nonsuch Palace, the former Tudor royal mansion. In the 1680s, with her gambling debts mounting, she had the palace torn down and sold the stone and timber. She also arranged that she and her children should have lifelong pensions totaling several thousand pounds annually, funded from the revenues of the customs and the post office.

Around 1590, Gabrielle d’Estrées became the chief mistress and political advisor of King Henry IV of France, and convinced him to convert to Roman Catholicism and thus end the French Wars of Religion. Henry named her Duchess of Beaufort and gave her a mansion in Paris. In 1599, he had his first marriage annulled and was preparing to marry her. She was pregnant when she died from complications of severe eclampsia. Rumors of poisoning circulated in the following days, but modern medicine does not believe she was poisoned.

Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart, known as Madame de Montespan, became chief mistress of King Louis XIV of France in 1667. Louis XIV constructed the Château de Clagny for her. He also legitimized their seven surviving children as royal princes. In 1680, she was mentioned in police witness accounts relating to the Affair of the Poisons, a conspiracy of poisonings and black magic at the French court. To avoid public scandal for his own children, Louis XIV shut down the case, and she was not formally put on trial.

Louise de La Vallière was the first mistress of young King Louis XIV of France. She became Duchess of Vaujours, was given land and pensions, and had her daughter legitimized. Eventually, the king’s attention turned away from Louise to Madame de Montespan, so Louise began to seek out religious redemption. She relinquished all titles and estates and went into a Carmelite convent in Paris, where she stayed until her death.

Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria was famous for his friendship with Katharina Schratt, a Viennese stage actress who was brought to his attention in 1885 at the behest of his wife, Empress Elisabeth, who wanted her husband to have someone to talk to. For more than 30 years she remained his closest confidante. Franz Joseph bought Schratt a villa in Bad Ischl and a palace near Schönbrunn in Vienna, and he repeatedly paid off her gambling debts from his personal treasury up until his death.

Lillie Langtry, born Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, became the official mistress of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) in 1877. He helped fund her Red House in Bournemouth and bought her jewelry. As the relationship faded, around 1880, Langtry began to capitalize on her fame by launching a career as an actress and theater manager. In 1888, she purchased a 4,200-acre vineyard property in California, and also owned a thoroughbred racing stable in England.

Countess Maria Walewska, of the Walewski family, met Emperor Napoleon I in Warsaw in 1807. She was encouraged in her approach by Polish nobles who wanted him to restore Polish independence. In 1810, she bore him a son, Alexandre Colonna-Walewski. Napoleon presented her with an estate in the Kingdom of Naples and an annual pension of 20,000 francs. He also made his son a count and gave him his own estate in Naples. Alexandre later became Foreign Minister to Napoleon III.

When Ziegfeld chorus girl Marion Davies met newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst in 1917, it marked the start of a long-term affair. Hearst supported Davies’ film-making ventures and gifted her property, including a home in Santa Monica, while Davies went on to earn an enviable reputation as a talented comedic actor and astute businesswoman. As Hearst’s media empire teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, Davies liquidated her jewelry and stocks in order to personally loan Hearst $1 million. He passed away more than a decade later, and Davies was left with her own considerable fortune.

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