Anne Marie Chassaigne, Liane de Pougy was born in La Flèche, Sarthe, France, 1869. After her education in a convent, her middle class parents secured their sixteen-year-old daughter's future by an arranged marriage to a "suitable" husband. The groom turned out to be a brute and physically abused her to the degree that she wore scars across her breasts for the rest of her life. By this marriage, she bore her only child, Marco Pourpe. After several years of abuse, she ran off to Paris.

Upon her arrival in Paris, the beautiful eighteen year old changed her name to Liane. As a dancer, Liane's beauty opened many doors to the music halls of Paris. Soft, elegant and refined, Liane de Pougy enraptured all Paris especially her notorious rivalry Caroline "La Belle" Otero, generating long duels over beauty, jewels, covered carts, and lovers.

Along the way, Liane, developed a scandalous, deep, and long-lasting love interest with writer Natalie Clifford Barney, as well as, a long line of rich and famous other lovers who showered her with expensive gifts of jewels, carriages, and summer homes in the country.

At the height of her career, Liane met her next great love, a Romanian but penniless aristocrat named Prince Georges Ghika. They married in 1910 and she became Princess Ghika. Their marriage lasted for sixteen years until Georges met a much younger woman and left. They separated but never divorced.

After the death of her son, an aviator who perished in World War I, Liane retired from her former life and, once again, turned towards religion joining a convent of nuns. The end of her life was devoted to the care of the disabled children.

Liane de Pougy died in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1950. She remains one of the great courtesans of the belle époque period and a true Princess.