Anna Schoen-René

Anna Eugénie Schoen-René (1864, Koblenz – 1942, New York) was a German-American soprano and teacher. She was the first German woman to be elected to the French International Union of Arts and Sciences.

Biography Anna Eugénie Schoen was born in Koblenz, Germany, in 1864. Her father was Baron von Schoen, a Court Councilor to the Emperor and Royal Master of Forestry and Agriculture in the Rhineland. Later she added the last part of her name, René, to acknowledge the French influence of her mother.

Soprano Schoen-René studied at the Royal Academy of Music in Berlin, Germany and, on the recommendation of her teacher there she became a voice student of the famed Pauline Viardot-García, herself a piano student of Franz Liszt. On her acceptance as a student, Schoen-René later said, "My real life as a musician and singer began only after I started my studies with her." She may have been the first woman to conduct an orchestra in the United States. These included many notable vocalists: Lucie Manén, Florencio Constantino, Risë Stevens, Mack Harrell, Judith Doniger, Lanny Ross, Marshall Bartholomew, George Meader, Sonia Essin, Paul Robeson, Thelma Votipka, Lillian Blauvelt, Florence Easton, Karin Branzell, Florence Austral, Charles Kullman, Marie Tiffany, Maria von Maximovitch, Julius Huehn, Eva Gauthier, George Britton, Ramona Rockway, Kitty Carlisle, and Margaret Harshaw.

She died in 1942 in New York City at 78 years of age.

In her will, she created the Anna E. Schoen-René Fund, to be administered by The New York Community Trust, stipulating that the fund's income would be used to help young Americans advance their studies in one of two very different fields, in forestry or in the vocal arts.