[12][13] By 1772, Romaine had migrated to the French-colonized side of the island, to the West Province of Saint-Domingue, and there acquired a small coffee plantation named Trou Coffy[c] in a deep, narrow, crater-like valley in the mountains near Léogâne, likely in what is now Fondwa.

[16] Various notarial records show Romaine buying and selling land and slaves in the area around Léogâne and Grande Marre in the 1780s, and establish that they had become "a respectable coffee grower and trader" by that time.

[2] Romaine came to be respected in the area, especially in the free black community, and between 1785 and 1791 became a godparent to nine people, while Adam became a godmother to four, connecting the couple to numerous other families.

[22] These connections and alliances allowed Romaine to later quickly gather a number of supporters when inter-racial tensions in the colony rose to the point of open conflict in 1791.

[37] Many of the area's free blacks initially allied with the charismatic Romaine, and with their support, the Trou Coffy insurgents pressed the inhabitants of Léogâne until they could no longer sustain even minimal resistance and sued for peace.

[33] Wealthier free blacks, feeling that their credibility in the eyes of whites and station in planter society were threatened by the slave uprising's revolutionary nature and increasing violence, also came to desire an end to the uprising, and asked the white French Catholic priest and doctor Félix Pascalis Ouvière (Abbé Ouvière) to go to Trou Coffy and negotiate a peace treaty.

[39] The treaty was "unprecedented not only in Saint-Domingue but also in the entire revolutionary Atlantic world" in putting a black leader in charge of one of a European colony's most important cities.

[45] During a Mass on New Year's Day in St. Rose de Lima (the oldest church in Haiti)[46] held to solemnize the peace treaty between Trou Coffy and Léogâne, insurgents no longer acting under Romaine's control disrupted the homily.

[48] These enemies were in turn being reinforced: French national commissioner Edmond de Saint-Léger was making his way to Port-au-Prince and mustering troops with which to retake Léogâne even as Romaine's own forces deserted.

[53] A letter dated April 12, 1792, published in the Mercure de France and likely written by Ouvière, states that Romaine not only avoided capture but "continues to preach".

[59] Shortly after the insurgency began, Romaine professed to be a godchild of the Virgin Mary, and produced written messages supposedly from her calling for the overthrow of slavery.

[5][51] Romaine "transgressed conventional gender norms", being visibly feminine in demeanor and appearance, wearing ribbons and rosaries[70] and dressing like a woman.

[71][76] Romaine has been compared to Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, who professed to be the incarnation of a male Catholic saint, as both of their religious self-identifications "transcended gender".

[58] Romaine-la-Prophétesse appears in Victor Hugo's novel Bug-Jargal, and plays a role in Mayra Montero's In the Palm of Darkness as a woman leading a pack of zombies.