Born at the Louvre Palace in Paris, France, Marie Elisabeth was loved by her parents despite their inevitable disappointment that she was not the male heir for which they hoped.

Despite the religious and political controversy stemming from the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre (which had occurred only two months before her birth), one of her godmothers was the Protestant queen Elizabeth I of England,[1] who sent William Somerset, 3rd Earl of Worcester as her proxy for the ceremony.

Hardly a year later, her mother returned to Vienna after Maximilian II repaid her dowry, while Marie Elisabeth, as a Daughter of France, remained behind.

Dynastically, Marie Elisabeth was important because she was the only Valois grandchild of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici, despite them having raised four sons to adulthood.

Had Marie Elisabeth been male, she would have been heir to the throne of France and, had she lived long enough, might have continued the House of Valois into a new generation and prevented some of the subsequent wars over the succession and religion.