Due to severe financial setbacks, her family came to live with her grandparents in Long Branch, New Jersey [2] and she spent the last year (1884–1885) of her grandfather's life in his home with his companionship.

I was not at all afraid of him, for he had a charming, gentle way of acting always, and though his face was generally grave, now and then a sudden gleam lighted up the eyes and made them seem to smile in answer to my chatter.

In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison appointed Julia's father as United States minister to Austria-Hungary.

Julia made her formal début into society in Vienna, at the court of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

Immediately after her father's tenure (1883–1887) as a police commissioner of the New York Police Department, Julia Dent Grant traveled to Europe in the company of her maternal aunt, Bertha Palmer (née Honoré) who was representing the Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago World's Fair.)

[5] Two weeks after their first meeting in Rome, Prince Cantacuzène followed Julia to Cannes, ostensibly to serve under Grand Duke Kyrill.

After a courtship of two days, the couple became engaged in Cannes,[6] then embarked upon four months of wedding preparation, during which time they were separated.

The couple married at Beaulieu, an Astor home which her aunt Bertha Palmer had leased for the summer season, in Newport, Rhode Island, in a small, private Russian Orthodox ceremony the evening of 24 September 1899.

He served with distinction and was wounded in battle in 1914; as commander of the South Russia Cossacks, in 1915 he led 15,000 men in what has been called the last great cavalry charge against a fortified position in military history.

[15] Cantacuzène was the author of numerous articles which appeared in The New York Times, The Saturday Evening Post, and Woman's Home Companion[4] Her books included, Russian People; Revolutionary Recollections, (1919) Revolutionary Days; Recollections of Romanoffs and Bolsheviki, 1914–1917, (1920) and My Life Here and There.