She was born at Marcourt, in Prince-Bishopric of Liège[1] (from which comes the appellation "de Méricourt"), a small town in the modern Belgian province of Luxembourg.

She was a cofounder of a Parisian revolutionary club and had warrants for her arrest issued in France for her alleged participation in the October Days uprising.

Anne-Josèphe fled back to her father after he remarried because she was forced to be a house maid and tend to her aunt's children.

They ended up at Madame Colbert's house in London where eventually a rich Englishman set his eyes on Anne-Josèphe.

After meeting renowned Italian tenor Giacomo David she was inspired to break away from Marquis de Persan and pursue her singing career.

In March 1789, she wrote to Jean-Frédéric Perregaux, a Swiss banker, thanking him for his assistance in acquiring payment from Marquis de Persan, asking for a loan to buy her eldest brother a managership, and requesting letters of recommendation for Rome and Naples.

In May 1789, after her younger brother was situated in Rome, she traveled from Italy to Paris, where she became swept up in the early stirrings of the revolution.

[4] In January 1790 she founded, along with Gilbert Romme, the Société des amis de la loi ("Society of Friends of the Law"), a club that sought to encourage and assist patriotic work in the provinces.

Beginning in November 1789, the Parisian royalist press began to construct a flamboyant and infamous caricature of Théroigne as a "patriots' whore" and "female war chief.

"[6] According to the pages of these pamphlets, she assaulted the Bastille and led the October Days march on Versailles; she fought soldiers and was "ever to be found where the unrest was greatest," attired in a "scarlet riding-habit and... black plume.

"[6] She was portrayed as a shameless libertine who was sexually involved with "Deputy Populus" ("the people")[7] and one tabloid wrote that "every representative [of the National Assembly] may fairly claim to be the father of her child.

After a short stay, she proceeded to Liège, in which town she was seized by warrant of the Austrian Government, and conveyed first to Tyrol and thereafter to the Kufstein Fortress, where she was interrogated about her revolutionary activities.

[8] They portrayed her as a subversive "Pythia," a possible spy who had corrupted soldiers with inflammatory rhetoric, threatened the royal family, and instigated the October Days.

Eventually Blanc grew an affection to her and arranged for her release after he discovered that she had many health issues, including depression, insomnia, migraines, and coughing of blood.

[12] In early 1793, she composed a series of placards arguing for the active involvement of women in encouraging patriotic duty.

On 15 May, Théroigne was delivering a speech in the Jardin des Tuileries when she was attacked by a group of women allied with the Jacobins.

[13] She ultimately was sent to La Salpêtrière Hospital in 1807, where she lived for 10 years, intermittently lucid and speaking constantly about the revolution.