Claude Ferval was the pen name used by Baroness Marguerite Aimery Harty de Pierrebourg, née Thomas-Galline.

For about ten years she devoted herself to painting, attending the Académie Julian, working under the direction of painter Tony Robert-Fleury and exhibiting at the Paris Salon.

After her daughter's marriage in 1910 Count Georges de Lauris,[3] Ferval wrote and published her first novel L'autre amour, which received good reviews and a prize from the Académie Française.

"[3] Claude Ferval devoted the rest of her literary career to writing biographies, most often of great female figures.

She died on 20 April 1943, in Herbault (Loir-et-Cher), France, and is buried in Passy Cemetery in Paris, in the tomb of her deceased lover Paul Hervieu.