She led a successful campaign to change the laws so women could legally bear witness and could control their own earnings.

[1] By 1878 Jeanne Schmahl had become active in groups led by Maria Deraismes and the pastor Tommy Fallot.

She joined the League for Raising Public Morality (Ligue pour le relèvement de la moralité publique), which was mainly concerned with making alcohol and pornography illegal.

Schmahl was incensed when she discovered that a woman had been dismissed from her job after she asked her employer not to give her wages to her alcoholic spouse.

[3] Schmahl thought that the strategy of the groups, led by Richer and Deraismes, of mixing religion and politics with women's issues was a mistake.

[4] As Schmahl wrote in 1896, Taking into consideration that the Civil Code is the one great obstacle to the emancipation of women in France, we decided to attack it.

Not, however, in its entirety, as had previously been attempted, but piecemeal, beginning by what appeared to be least defended by our opponents and therefore easiest of conquest; at the same time choosing the point which should logically come first, as the foundation of women's freedom.

We were not long in coming to the conclusion that, financial freedom being the root of all liberty, we must first set to work to obtain for married women the right to their own earnings.

Anne de Rochechouart de Mortemart (1847–1933), Duchess of Uzès and Juliette Adam (1836–1936) soon joined the Avant-Courrière, and Schmahl found support from Jane Misme (1865–1935), who later founded the journal La Française and Jeanne Chauvin (1862–1926), the first woman to become a doctor of law.

If a woman bought something with her earnings that she did not consume herself, such as a piece of furniture, it became her husband's property unless there was a marriage contract that specified otherwise.

The sole objective, as published in La Française early in 1909, was to obtain women's suffrage through legal approaches.

[12] Schmahl resigned from the UFSF in 1911 due to disputes with Cécile Brunschvicg, although the reason given was health problems.