Méry Laurent, born Anne Rose Suzanne Louviot (29 April 1849 - 26 November 1900), was a demi-mondaine (courtesan) and the muse of several Parisian artists.

She used to run her own “salon” where she hosted many French (and even American) writers and painters of her time: Stéphane Mallarmé, Émile Zola, Marcel Proust, François Coppée, Henri Gervex, James Whistler, and Édouard Manet.

[citation needed] In 1874, after becoming a high-class prostitute, she met Thomas W. Evans, an extremely wealthy American dental surgeon who tended to many high-profile people, and even royal families.

[citation needed] When Laurent died, she bequeathed her wealth to Victor Margueritte, her last favorite and "protégé", with the exception of her allegoric portrait of Autumn[2] (a painting by Manet, begun in 1882), which went to the Museum of Fine Arts of Nancy.

The "salon" she ran was a place of exchanges which boosted the creative steps of those who patronized it: one could find there Edouard Manet and Henri Gervex, but also poets and writers such as Stéphane Mallarmé, François Coppée, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Marcel Proust (the author painted Méry Laurent's portrait through Odette de Crécy's character in "Swann in Love",[3]) or even Zola (who based his 1880 novel Nana on Méry Laurent).