Anne-Françoise de Fougeret born Anne-Françoise Outremont (1745–1813), was a French socialite and

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

Christine Adams,
Poverty, Charity, and Motherhood: Maternal Societies in Nineteenth-Century
' who founded one of the first secular women's charity organizations in France, the Société de Charité Maternelle.

Life

Anne-Françoise de Fougeret was married to the rich Parisian financier Jean Fougeret de Chateau Renard, and the mother of the memoir writers Anguelique de Maussion and

Elisa de Menerville The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (, ) is a commonly used analytical biochemistry assay, first described by Eva Engvall and Peter Perlmann in 1971. The assay uses a solid-phase type of enzyme immunoassay (EIA) to detect the presenc ...

. Both her father and her spouse were active within charity. Anne-Françoise de Fougeret had originally been involved in finding wet nurses for abandoned infants, using older women from her husband's estates. They fed the children goat's and cow's milk but three-quarters of them died. De Fougeret realised that the best solution was to help poor mothers feed and nurture their infants, preventing their abandonment. In 1788, de Fougeret founded the ''Société de Charité Maternelle'' to support poor mothers and children. She was its first president, under the protection of Queen

Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child a ...

. The charity continued to opera during the French Revolution, but stopped during the

Reign of Terror The Reign of Terror (french: link=no, la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, ...

. In 1801, the charity was revived. De Fougeret's daughters became involved with the charity, but she remained a non-participating member. During the

, the entire Fougeret family (with the exception of her daughter Elisa, who was abroad), was imprisoned. De Fougeret's husband was guillotined, but the rest of the family was released after the fall of Robespierre.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fougeret, Anne-Francoise de 1813 deaths 1745 births 19th-century French philanthropists 18th-century French women 18th-century philanthropists 18th-century women philanthropists