She was the daughter of the famous orientalist Joachim Menant and a pupil of James Darmesteter.
[1] In 1900, she was sent as an attaché at the Guimet Museum to india to study the Parsis.She left with both her mother and a servant and arrived in Bombay in October 1900.
She then studied the Parsis, their familial and political life, their education, hospitals, religion, and funerary rites.
Injured in a car accident, she spent three weeks recovering in hospital in Surat.
In Surat she also met the family that housed Anquetil-Duperron (from 1758 to 1761), the first European translator of the sacred book of Parsis, the Zend-Avesta.