Anne Marie Chassaigne, Liane de Pougy was born in La Flèche, Sarthe, France, 1869 to middle-class parents who raised and educated her in a convent. At the age of sixteen, she ran away and married a naval officer, Armand Pourpe. Their only valuable possession was a rosewood piano.

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. While her husband's naval career led him to Marseilles, Anne Marie took a lover. When he returned, Armand caught his wife and her lover in bed. He became violently abusive, even shooting her in the wrist with his gun. After this event Anne Marie sold the rosewood piano and used the proceeds to run off to Paris, leaving her infant son with his father.

Upon her arrival in Paris, the beautiful eighteen year old changed her name to Liane de Pougy, taken from one of her paramours, a Comte or Vicomte de Pougy. With little money, Liane began to dabble in acting and prositution, setting herself up with Countess Valtesse de la Bigne, who taught her the practice of being a courtesan. She cultivated an interest in paintings, books and poetry, but preferred café-concerts and popular songs of the day to that of Shakespeare or Wagner. She made minor appearances in the Folies-Bergere,cabernet clubs in on the French Riviera and in St Petersburg.

Liane's beauty opened many doors to the music halls of Paris. Actress Sarah Bernhardt had the task of teaching her to act but advised that when she was on stage, it might be best to keep her "pretty mouth shut".

Soft, elegant and refined, Liane de Pougy enraptured all Paris including artists who wanted to paint her great beauty but it was her most notorious rivalry Caroline "La Belle" Otero, who generated long duels over beauty, jewels, covered carts, and lovers.

Liane also 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 1920 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 as Sister Anne-Mary of the Order of Saint Dominic devoting the rest of her life to the care of 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.