She was a student at the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles (ENSJF) in Sèvres, receiving her teaching diploma in 1890.

[1] Choosing the pen name "Réval", in several of her novels, she wrote about girls in their schools and their place in society, for example, Lycéennes (1902) and La Bachelière (1910).

In 1904, when the issue of girls' primary and secondary education was gaining attention, she published L’Avenir de nos filles, a work listing women's professions.

She underscored the precariousness for women to become authors: "Only a rich woman can, to some extent, reconcile her duties as a mother with those as a writer".

With 21 other women who contributed to the journal La Vie heureuse, she sought to develop an alternative to the Prix Goncourt, considered misogynistic.