Louise's maternal grandfather was said to be Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, Swedish Ambassador to France, but as de Staël also maintained a longstanding romantic relationship and intellectual collaboration with liberal political activist and writer Benjamin Constant, who believed he fathered Albertine (Louise's mother), it is possible that Constant was her biological grandfather.

[5] At age 11, she attended the opening night of Victor Hugo's play "Hernani", famous for the demonstrations it provoked; as a young pianist, she had personally known Chopin.

"I was destined to beguile, to attract, to seduce, and in the final reckoning to cause suffering in all those who sought their happiness in me", Louise wrote;[8] "I wanted to marry young and have a brilliant position in society.

Whatever her initial sentiments, the marriage seems to have evolved into a happy one; the couple lived in the Hôtel de Broglie, 35 rue Saint-Dominique, a residence renovated for them by the fashionable architect and interior designer Hippolyte Destailleur.

They had three children: Victor-Bernard (1837–1838), who died in infancy, Mathilde (1839–1898), who never married, and Gabriel Paul Othenin Bernard, known as Paul-Gabriel d'Haussonville (1843–1924), a renowned politician and essayist, through whom she has many descendants.

She was also the great-grandmother of philologist Béatrix d'Andlau (1893–1989) and her brother Jean Le Marois (1895–1978), poet and dramatist, who were both members of the Andlau family.

[6][15] At around the same time, Ingres, by then 60 years old and convinced his reputation would be secured through larger-scale undertakings,[5] expressed dismay to a friend that "everyone wants" portraits.

[18] Ingres significantly revised Louise's costume and refined her facial expression, adding extensive notes to at least one working draft: "indent the nostril", "chin sharper", "eyeballs smaller", "nose narrower".

[5][6] Art historian (and Frick curator emeritus[19]) Edgar Munhall has suggested that both "Antiochus and Stratonice" as well as Ingres's portrait of Louise owe an inspirational debt to the pose of Pudicitia ("modesty" or "sexual valor"), a Roman statue of a goddess on display in the Vatican collection.

[1][5] In his book on Ingres, Robert Rosenblum connects her pose to Polyhymnia, muse of sacred poetry, hymn, and eloquence, as depicted particularly in the Louvre's Roman copy of a Greek original.

[5] Regardless of the specific inspiration, Ingres's portrait of Louise depicts a woman both modest and worldly, her gaze fixed on the viewer who seems almost to have surprised her, after her return from the opera, having casually removed her evening wrap.

[5] Following the death of Paul-Gabriel d'Haussonville in 1924, his descendants sold the painting to offset estate taxes[21] to art dealer Georges Wildenstein,[8] from whom it was next acquired by the Frick Collection for $125,000 in 1927.