Her father was the cellist and composer Frederick Nicholls Crouch, who married her mother, the contralto Lydia (née Pearson), at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden in 1832.

Crouch was sent to a convent boarding school in Boulogne, France, but later returned to live with her paternal grandmother, Anna Maria (née Nicholls).

Following the death of her husband, Crouch's paternal grandfather, Anna Maria married the former Secretary of the Royal Philharmonic Society, violinist, composer and arranger William Watts.

[4] On her own in London, Crouch made the acquaintance of Robert Bignell, proprietor of a notorious pleasure establishment, the Argyll Rooms.

Crouch resolved to practice the trade with higher expectations, with the goal of becoming the kept woman of select dedicated lovers with the financial means to keep her in luxury.

It was at this time that Crouch took on the name Cora Pearl, a pseudonym chosen to resonate with the new identity and future she hoped to craft for herself in Paris.

He provided her with funds for gambling when she visited the casinos and racecourse in the fashionable resort of Baden, Germany, and bought her the first horse Pearl ever owned.

The château was conceived for gala entertainments, and there were rarely fewer than 15 guests at the dinner table, with the chef instructed to spare no cost on the expenditure for food.

The meal's next course was Cora Pearl herself, presented lying naked on a huge silver platter, garnished with parsley, and carried in by four large men.

Invariably enthusiastic about exhibiting her physical charms to an audience, she took the role of a singing Cupid in the Jacques Offenbach operetta Orphée aux Enfers, (Orpheus in the Underworld) performed at the Theatre Bouffes-Parisien in 1867.

The chronicle of the evening continued with "Apparently the beautiful Cora Pearl had already munched up a brochette ("skewer") of five or six historical fortunes with her pretty white teeth.

Her jewel collection alone was valued at 1 million francs; at one point, she owned three homes, and her clothing was made for her by the renowned couturier Charles Frederick Worth.

Pearl had become embroiled in a relationship with a wealthy young man, Alexandre Duval, 10 years her junior, whose obsession for her was so intense that he spent his entire fortune on sustaining his liaison with her, giving her jewels, fine horses, and money.

The gun he brought accidentally discharged, wounding him near fatally; initially near death, he eventually recovered, but the consequences of the event proved disastrous for Pearl's reputation.

Publicized as l'affaire Duval, the scandal caused the authorities to order Pearl to leave the country,[12] leading to her expulsion from Paris to first London and later Monaco and Nice.

Pearl was no longer able to attract the titled men who had been her prime clients; in 1874, her long tenure as the mistress of Prince Napoleon ended at his request.

He wrote her a touching, carefully worded letter of regret; he could no longer sustain the emotional and professional toll the relationship required of him.

In 1873, she sold her rue Chaillot home, and by 1883, she had returned to common prostitution, taking an apartment above the shop of a coachbuilder on the avenue Champs-Elysées, where she received clients.

Published in 1886 in Paris and subsequently in England in London, Pearl claimed to have sent relevant pages to her former lovers, offering to anonymise their names if they paid her.

Her remaining possessions were disposed of in a two-day sale in October 1886, and she was buried in Batignolles cemetery, (plot number 10, row 4), in a grave leased for five years.