Known throughout Europe for her ballooning exploits, Blanchard entertained Napoleon Bonaparte, who promoted her to the role of "Aeronaut of the Official Festivals", replacing André-Jacques Garnerin.

In 1819, she became the first woman to be killed in an aviation accident when, during an exhibition in the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, she launched fireworks that ignited the gas in her balloon.

Blanchard had abandoned his first wife, Victoire Lebrun, and their four children to travel round Europe pursuing his ballooning career, and she later died in poverty.

The couple faced bankruptcy as a result of Blanchard's poor business sense, and they believed a female balloonist was a novelty that might attract enough attention to solve their financial problems.

Thible, an opera singer, had made an ascent to entertain Gustav III of Sweden in Lyon on 4 June 1784, fourteen years before Citoyenne Henri.

[3] Other aeronauts were making names for themselves by demonstrating parachute jumps from the baskets of balloons, in particular the family of André-Jacques Garnerin, whose wife, daughter and niece all performed regularly.

[8] His niece, Élisa Garnerin, was Blanchard's chief rival as a female aeronaut, and it was rare for a suitable event to lack a performance by one or the other.

[9] The couple had still been in debt at the time of Blanchard's death, so to minimise her expenses, Sophie was as frugal as possible in her choice of balloon.

[14] She made ascents for Napoleon's entertainment on 24 June 1810 from the Champ de Mars in Paris and at the celebration mounted by the Imperial Guard for his marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria.

[11] When Louis XVIII entered Paris on 4 May 1814 after being restored to the French throne, Blanchard ascended in her balloon from the Pont Neuf as part of the triumphal procession.

[21] Sophie crossed the Alps by balloon,[22] and on a trip to Turin on 26 April 1812 the temperature dropped so low that she suffered a nose bleed and icicles formed on her hands and face.

The canopy of her balloon became caught in a tree which caused the chair to tip over; Blanchard, entangled in the rigging, was forced into the water of the marsh and would have drowned had not help arrived soon after her landing.

[6] Sympathising with Marie Thérèse de Lamourous who was attempting to run a shelter for "fallen women" (La Miséricorde) in Bordeaux, she offered to donate the proceeds from one of her ascents to the venture.

[23] On 6 July 1819, in the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, her hydrogen-filled balloon caught fire and Blanchard, entangled in the surrounding net, fell to her death.

One report suggested that she finally made up her mind and stepped into her chair with the words "Allons, ce sera pour la dernière fois" ("Let's go, this will be for the last time").

John Poole, an eyewitness, described her final moments: There was a terrible pause, then Mme Blanchard caught up in the netting of her balloon, fell with a crash upon the slanting roof of a house in the Rue de Provence, and then into the street, where she was taken up a shattered corpse.

[2] Norwich Duff, who had witnessed Blanchard's ascent and the accident, recorded: The effect of so shocking an accident on the minds of several thousand people assembled for amusement, and in high spirits, may easily be imagined...[30]On hearing she had died, the proprietors of the Tivoli Gardens immediately announced that the admission fees would be donated for the support of her children, and some spectators stood at the gates appealing to the citizens of Paris for donations.

[30] The appeal raised 2,400 francs, but after the collection it was discovered that she had no surviving children, so the money was used instead to erect a memorial, topped with a representation of her balloon in flames, above her grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Jules Verne mentioned her in Five Weeks in a Balloon and, in The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky likened the thrill of committing oneself in gambling to the sensation that Blanchard must have felt as she fell.

[34] Released in 2019, The Aeronauts features a character, "pilot" Amelia Rennes (played by Felicity Jones), who was partly inspired by Blanchard.