Romance, Adultery, And Murder: The Gripping Saga of French Socialite Henriette Caillaux

When political enemies of her Prime Minister husband began publishing private letters between Henriette and her husband in the newspapers, Henriette took drastic action

Depiction of Genevieve Josephine Henriette Raynouard.

Background

She was born Genevieve Josephine Henriette Raynouard on December 5, 1874, in a suburb of Paris called the Rueil-Malmaison, the only child of Henri Emile Raynouard and Marie Sophie Augustine Doinel.

She was raised, as all young ladies were during this period in France, to place the needs of the family before her own. That meant placing her wants, dreams, and desires to the side.

But even as a young girl, Henrietta yearned for the life she had only read about in romantic novels, aching to find the one true romantic love that would allow her to escape the confines of her home life and give her the future she longed for with the love of her life.

For most girls of her era, getting married was the only way for her to escape from the four walls of her parent’s house, a house that was fil…