Fortunato Bartolomeo de Félice was born in Rome to a Neapolitan family, as the eldest of six children, on 24 August 1723.

There he became friends with the Prince Raimondo di Sangro who aided him in his translation of the physicist John Arbuthnot's works from Latin.

After rescuing the imprisoned Countess Panzutti,[2] Félice and his new wife Agnese fled to Bern, with the help of his friend Albrecht von Haller, due to religious persecution from the Catholic Church in Rome.

In 1762, after the death of the Countess Panzutti due to influenza at Tscharner's residence, Château Lansitz, de Felice moved to Yverdon where he founded an educational institute for young people from all over Europe, and a printing press.

He was married four times and had 13 children: in 1756 to Countess Agnese Arcuato, Countessa di Panzutti (1720–1759)[2] (whereby his title was received jure uxoris, so Arcuato's previous husband was recorded as the first Count Panzutti), in 1759 to Susanne de Wavre Neuchâtel (1737–1769), in 1769 to Louise Marie Perrelet (died 1774), and in 1774 to Jeanne Salomé Sinet.

In de Felice's famous printing house, as well as the Encyclopedia, he translated into French works of Elie Bertrand, Charles Bonnet, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Albrecht von Haller, Gabriel Seigneux de Correvon, Samuel-Auguste Tissot, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and other Enlightenment authors.

An 18th-century depiction of de Félice is held by the Achenbach Foundation in the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts.

quondam Professor: Mundi, hominisque legum sedulus Inda- gator, et felix qua Voce, qua Scriptus Interpres Encyclopediae Ebrodunensis Contaborator et Editor Born: Rome, 24 August 1723 Naples – Philosophy, Physics and Maths Professor – World, a zealous investigator by this love of speech wrote the Yverdon Encyclopaedia editor and contributor Dans le sein de l'Erreur trouva la Vérite; Et sachant la montrer dans l'Encyclopédie, S'est fait un titre sür à l'Immortalité.