On March 12, 1756, Bathilde and her brother were amongst the first people in France to be inoculated against smallpox, a decision made by their father against the advice of both their mother and King Louis XV.

The procedure was performed by physician Théodore Tronchin, and a few days later, "the Duchess of Orleans, having appeared at the Opera with her two children, was greeted by endless applause and cheers, as if the two princes had miraculously escaped death.

[2]: 49–51 Initially, Bathilde was considered as a possible bride for a distant cousin, Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, the favourite grandson of King Louis XV of France and Queen Marie Leczinska.

She first met her future husband, the Duke of Enghien, the son and heir of the Prince of Condé and Charlotte de Rohan, at the Palace of Versailles when attending the wedding of her brother in July 1769.

[2]: 57  The periodic reconciliations between Bathilde and her husband eventually allowed her to give birth to their only son, Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, in August 1772.

Both husband and wife had lovers, and in 1778 Bathilde gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Adelaïde-Victoire, who was registered under the surname Dumassy (and not Damassy as was often mentioned in genealogical works).

"After exchanging a few words, the irritated Duchess reached up and snatched off his mask whereupon he pulled her nose so hard and painfully that she wept.

Bathilde's houses, the Élysée Palace and the Château de Petit-Bourg, became the most important meeting centres for mysticism in revolutionary France, and were frequented by important occult figures including: the Marquis de Puységur, a founder of hypnotism; Christian mystics Dom Gerle, Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, and Pierre Pontard, who conceptualized the French Revolution as divinely ordained; and the prophets Suzette Labrouse, who foretold the calling of the Estates General and the revolution ten years before they occurred, and Catherine Théot, who believed she was destined to be the mother of the new, revolutionary, Messiah.

In April 1793, her nephew, the young Duke of Chartres (future Louis Philippe, King of the French), fled France and sought asylum with the Austrians.

[2]: 135-6 While other members of the Orléans family still in France were kept under house arrest, Bathilde, Philippe Égalité and his sons were imprisoned in the Fort Saint-Jean in Marseille.

Miraculously spared during the Reign of Terror, Bathilde was liberated during the Thermidorian Reaction and returned to her Élysée residence in Paris.

It was in Barcelona that she learnt of the death of her son, Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien, kidnapped and executed by firing squad in the moat of the Château de Vincennes.

That year she founded, in memory of her son, l'hospice d'Enghien at Reuilly near Paris, a home for the elderly and especially former servants of the d'Orléans family.