Anne-Catherine de Ligniville, Madame Helvétius

By the time he died twenty years later, the couple had amassed a vast fortune, and with it Madame Helvétius maintained her salon which featured the greatest figures of the Enlightenment for over five decades.

[1] Among the habitués of Madame Helvétius's salon were Julie de Lespinasse and Suzanne Necker, writers Fontenelle, Diderot, Chamfort, Duclos, Saint-Lambert, Marmontel, Roucher, Saurin, André Chénier, and Volney.

The sculptor Houdon, Baron Gérard and other leading figures of the time such as Charles-Joseph Panckoucke and François-Ambroise Didot were also attendees.

The cats were a well-known feature of Madame Helvétius's salon, always bedecked with silk ribbons and doted on by their loving caregiver.

Madame Helvétius is mentioned briefly in the Robert Lawson children's book Ben and Me (1939) as having many important people at her dinners, and also having cats (distressing to the protagonist, who is a mouse) and a particularly disagreeable dog.