She was known for her involvement in feminist causes and charities, politics, sport hunting, automobiles and the arts, and was an accomplished author and sculptor, the latter using the name Manuela.

The Neo-Renaissance style Château de Boursault, designed by the architect Arveuf, was built by Madame Clicquot Ponsardin, founder of the Veuve Clicquot Champagne house, in honor of the marriage of her granddaughter Marie Clémentine to Louis de Mortemart-Rochechouart in 1839.

[2] She became "a sportswoman, an author, an artist, a sculptor, a chauffeuse, a ministering angel to the poor, a grande mondaine, and an industrious mother.

"[13] The Duchess of Uzès was a strong supporter of the conservative and royalist politician Georges Ernest Boulanger (1837–1891), and donated more than three million francs to his cause, a large sum at the time.

[15] The Duchess of Uzès was keen on sport hunting, and led the Rallye Bonnelles in the Rambouillet forest from the 1880s until her death.

[15] When aged 80, in July 1926 she took her oath at the Rambouillet Civil Court as Lieutenant de Louveterie, an official position related to regulation of hunting.

It was at Bonnelles that the Duchess received the Empress of Austria, who expressed her surprise and admiration at seeing a hunt organised and conducted by a woman with as much skill and perfection as though it had been arranged by a Master of the Hounds.

She made sculptures of Diana, Émile Augier, Nicolas Gilbert, Notre-Dame de France (the Virgin Mary), Saint Hubert and Joan of Arc.

[5] A 1900 painting by Adolphe Demange (1857–1928) shows her working on a monumental clay statue of Joan of Arc in Falguière's studio.

The sculpture was the model for a cast iron and bronze statue that stood in the Place du Château at Mehun-sur-Yèvre until 1944, when it was destroyed by the German army.