Her life inspired Balzac's most famous novel, Eugénie Grandet (1833), which depicted in part her family,[2] who were living at the time in the French city of Sartrouville.
[3] In 1833, as he revealed in a letter to his sister, Balzac entered into a secret intrigue with Marie du Fresnay,[4] who was then aged 24.
In 1834, eight months following Balzac's letter to his sister, Maria du Fresnay's daughter Marie-Caroline was born.
In 1839, she appears as the dedicatee of the second edition of Balzac's Eugenie Grandet[5] under the pseudonym "Maria", which was her nickname in her social circle.
In 1850, she would inherit from Balzac a statue of the French sculptor Francois Girardon, which confirmed the rumor of his paternity.