His father, a genre painter, died when Fortuny was three years old and his mother, Cecilia, moved the family to Paris, France.

It was apparent at a young age that Fortuny was a gifted artist, showing a talent for painting as well as a passion for textiles.

As a young man, Fortuny travelled throughout Europe seeking out artists he admired, among them the German composer Richard Wagner.

Fortuny became quite varied in his talents, some of them including inventing, painting, photography, sculpting, architecture, etching and theatrical stage lighting.

Fortuny and other followers of this concept believed that one can only improve the quality of a product by having a good knowledge of something's raw materials and the process of its construction.

Through his experiences with Wagner and the theatre, Fortuny became a lighting engineer, architect, inventor, director, and set designer.

As a set designer, he wanted to create a more seamless way of transitioning from one scene to another other than flying out a backdrop and bringing in a new one.

"[5] He used these indirect lighting techniques in his new invention, the Fortuny cyclorama dome, a quarter-dome-shaped structure of plaster or cloth.

Even more impressively, he invented a suction fan, specifically for this project, which forced out the air to keep the structure taut.

His first works in fabric appeared after they began cohabitating, and there is little documentation to attest which creations were hers or his - except the silk-pleating process, which was Negrin's invention.

[citation needed] Fortuny and Negrin rebelled against the style lines that were popular during his time period, and Henriette created the Delphos gown,[8] a shift dress made of finely pleated silk weighed down by glass beads that held its shape and flowed on the body.

With these dyes they began printing on velvets and silks and dyed them using a press that they invented with wooden blocks onto which they engraved the pattern.