Although she was never considered queen of France, as the marriage was carried out in secret, Madame de Maintenon had considerable political influence as one of the King's closest advisers and the governess of the royal children.

Born into an impoverished Huguenot noble family, Françoise married the poet Paul Scarron in 1652, which allowed her access to the Parisian high society.

She was widowed in 1660, but later saw her fortunes improve through her friendship with Louis XIV's mistress, Madame de Montespan, who tasked her with the upbringing of the king's extramarital children.

In 1686, she founded the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, a school for girls from impoverished noble families, which had a significant influence on female education under the Ancien Régime.

A plaque suggests her birthplace was at the Hotel du Chaumont,[1] but some sources indicate she was born in[2] or just outside the local prison, where her Huguenot father Constant d'Aubigné was incarcerated for conspiring against King Louis XIII's powerful chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu.

[8] Madame de Neuillant, the mother of Françoise's godmother, then brought the girl to Paris and introduced her to sophisticated people, who became vital contacts that she would use in the future.

After Paul Scarron's death in 1660,[9] the Queen Mother Anne of Austria continued his pension to his widow and even increased it to 2,000 livres a year, thus enabling Françoise to remain in literary society.

Once again in straitened circumstances and having spent several years living off the charity of her friends, Madame Scarron prepared to leave Paris for Lisbon as a lady-in-waiting to the new queen of Portugal,[5] Marie-Françoise de Nemours.

[9] After Louis Auguste and his siblings were legitimised on 20 December 1673, she moved to the Château de Saint-Germain and became the Governess of the Children of France, one of the very few people permitted to speak candidly with the king as an equal.

[9] Soon after the Affair of the Poisons, Montespan left the court and was unofficially replaced by de Maintenon, who proved to be a good influence on Louis XIV.

Though she later claimed she didn't yield to his advances ("Nothing is so clever as to conduct one's self irreproachably,"[11]) the king spent much of his spare time with the royal governess by the late 1670s, discussing politics, economics, and religion.

Bontemps, governor of Versailles, chief valet on duty, and the most confidential of the four, was present at this mass, at which the monarch and La Maintenon were married in presence of Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, as diocesan, of Louvois (both of whom drew from the King a promise that he would never declare this marriage), and of Montchevreuil...

[3] However, her judgment wasn't infallible and some mistakes were undoubtedly made; replacing the military commander Nicolas Catinat by the Duke of Villeroi in 1701 may be attributed to her, but certainly not the Spanish Succession.

In the latter years of her life, she encouraged her husband to promote her previous charges, the children of the king by Madame de Montespan, to high positions at court intermediate between the prince and princesses du sang and the peers of the realm.

The school began at Rueil and moved to Noisy-le-Roi until the King endowed Saint-Cyr, a village 5 km west of Versailles, at her request by using the funds of the Abbey of St.

Madame de Maintenon was considered a born teacher and a friendly, motherly influence on her pupils, who included Dauphine Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy.

[5] The school buildings housed 250 students, cared for by 36 lay female educators or "professes", 24 "converses" sisters carrying out domestic tasks, and some priests.

In the Revolutionary context, Madame de Maintenon's ideas were used by local officials and philanthropists who successfully established neighbourhood primary schools that accepted many young poor girls.

Her work had a lasting impact on the original feminist movement, which gathered in Parisian salons and during the Age of Enlightenment, one aim of which was to promote educational equality between sexes to both improve society with more capable workers and help lower-class women escape their condition and prostitution.

[20] After her husband's death in 1715, Françoise retired to the Maison royale de Saint-Louis at Saint-Cyr-l'École with a pension of 48,000 livres by the Duc d'Orléans and regent of France.

Her will expressed her wishes to be buried in the choir at Saint-Cyr and bequeath her Château de Maintenon to her niece, Françoise Charlotte d'Aubigné, Duchess of Noailles[5] and her brother Charles' only daughter.