As she was from a peasant background, her morganatic marriage to Prince Pierre-Napoléon, although recognized by the Catholic Church, was not accepted by Napoleon III and the House of Bonaparte and did not receive civil legitimacy until the fall of the Second French Empire.

[1] Her husband was the son of Lucien Bonaparte, 1st Prince of Canino and Musignano and Alexandrine de Bleschamp and a nephew of Napoleon I of France.

The House of Bonaparte did not approve of the marriage due to Ruflin's social class, and prevented a civil union from occurring until the fall of the Second French Empire.

She had five children, only two of whom survived: Ruflin was the grandmother of Princess Marie Bonaparte and helped raise her after her mother, Marie-Félix Blanc, died in 1882.

Back in France, she orchestrated the marriages of her son to Marie-Félix Blanc, an heiress, and her daughter to Christian de Villeneuve-Esclapon, a nobleman.