Innovations included good lighting, clearly marked fixed prices, and allowing customers to pick out their own clothes and try them on before buying.

The couple were active in philanthropic work, and gave out bonuses for large families during the population crisis that followed World War I (1914–18).

[3] At the "Nouvelle Héloïse" store she met a young salesman a year younger than her named Théodore Ernest Cognacq.

Ernest left school and began working as a travelling salesman between La Rochelle and Bordeaux.

He then moved to Paris and worked in various stores, including La Nouvelle Héloïse, where he met Marie-Louise.

[4] The couple worked hard and saved, and managed to buy the shop, now called La Samaritaine.

[4] Ernest Cognacq met the architect Frantz Jourdain in May 1883, a pioneer in iron-frame architecture and Art Nouveau.

The store offered a wide range of goods and let customers pick out items themselves and take them to the sales desk.

[6] By the 1990s the stores were no longer profitable and were sold to the LVMH group, which had already bought Le Bon Marché.

[4] Marie-Louise created the 35 hectares (86 acres) Jaÿsinia botanical garden in her home town of Samoëns, opened to the public on 3 September 1906.

[4] Between 1900 and 1925 Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jaÿ assembled an important collection of 18th century art, which they meant to exhibit in their store La Samaritaine de luxe, opened in 1917.

In 1920 they gave the Académie Française a fund of 100 million francs to reward 300 deserving large families each year in an effort to boost the birth rate after the war.