As an impoverished young girl who loved to dance, Weber is said to have enjoyed dressing up in laundry customers' expensive clothing and pretending to be a glamorous star on a great stage.

In her routine, she would tease the male audience by swirling her raised dress to reveal the heart embroidered on her knickers and would do a high kick while flipping off a man's hat with her toe.

[5] Because of her frequent habit of picking up a customer's glass and quickly downing its contents while dancing past his table, she was affectionately nicknamed La Goulue (The Glutton).

[11] The toast of Paris and the highest paid entertainer of her day, she became one of the favorite subjects for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, immortalized by his portraits and posters of her dancing at the Moulin Rouge.

[14] She invested a considerable amount of money into a show that travelled the country as part of a large fair; but her fans who had lined up to buy tickets at the Moulin Rouge did not take to the new setting, and her business venture turned into a dismal failure.