Henri, Count of Paris

Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d'Orléans (14 June 1933 – 21 January 2019) was the Orléanist pretender to the defunct French throne as Henry VII. He used the style of Count of Paris.

He was head of the House of Orléans as senior in male-line descent from King Louis Philippe I, who reigned from 1830 to 1848. Henri was a retired military officer as well as an author and painter.

Early life He was the first son of Henri, Count of Paris (1908–1999), and his wife Princess Isabelle of Orléans-Braganza, and was born in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, Belgium, a law in 1886 having permanently exiled from France the heads of its formerly reigning dynasties and their eldest sons.

Despite the ban, while living in Belgium Henri occasionally accompanied his mother on brief visits to France and, later, to his mother's relatives in Brazil. Later that year, his parents purchased an estate near Paris, the Manoir du Cœur-Volant in Louveciennes, which became Henri's first home in France. Transferred from there to a garrison in Germany, he took up a new assignment as military instructor at Bonifacio in Corsica, where his wife and children joined him early in 1963.

Henri was also a painter and launched his own brand of perfume. His political career included unsuccessfully contesting the 2004 European elections for the Alliance Royale, a monarchist party.

Marriages and children Henri met Duchess Marie Therese of Württemberg (born 1934), like himself a descendant of King Louis-Philippe, at a ball given by the Thurn and Taxis family in Munich. Prince Pierre d'Orléans (born 6 August 2003, Cannes).

In 1984, Henri and Marie-Thérèse were divorced. On 31 October 1984 Henri entered a civil marriage with Micaëla Anna María Cousiño y Quiñones de León (1938–2022), daughter of Luis Cousiño y Sebire and his wife, Antonia Maria Quiñones de Léon y Bañuelos, 4th Marquesa de San Carlos, Henri and his father refused to attend the wedding but Marie proceeded to marry civilly at Dreux's city hall on 22 July 1989, and religiously at the castle of her mother's brother in Germany, on 29 July 1989. All but two of Henri's eight siblings also boycotted the ceremonies, but his sister Diane (wife of Montpensier's brother) hosted, and Henri's mother, Madame the Countess of Paris, was a guest at the religious wedding. In the first half of the 2000s, he covered also the charge of Great Official of the Grande Loge de Marque de France.

Head of house Until he succeeded his father as royal claimant, Henri and his second wife occupied an apartment in Paris. On 19 June 1999, Henri's father died and he became the new head of the House of Orléans. He took the traditional title, Count of Paris, adding an ancient one, Duke of France,

As Count of Paris, Henri took part in some European royal events attending, for instance, the 2011 marriage of Albert II of Monaco.

Legal cases Prior to succeeding his father as royal claimant, Henri launched an unsuccessful court case (1987–1989) in which he challenged the right of his rival paternal 10th cousin Louis-Alphonse, Duke of Anjou, to use the undifferenced royal arms of France and the Anjou title. The French courts dismissed the case on the grounds that Henri failed to prove that he had demonstrated a right to the hereditaments in questions, noting also that the court lacked jurisdiction in a dispute over dynastic claims of France's former royal family.

After his father's death, a court-appointed lawyer searched through the late count's effects on behalf of his nine living children, to reclaim what remained of the family's dissipated fortune. Jewels, art-work, and an exceptional medieval illustrated manuscript were found. These were auctioned off, raising approximately US$14 million.

In 2000 bailiffs pursued Henri for US$143,000 back rent after he fled the Villa Boileau, a 17th-century Paris house he had occupied. Cross for Military Valour (8 May 1959) Combatant Cross Two Sicilies House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies: Bailiff Knight Grand Cross of Justice of the Calabrian Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George House of Württemberg: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown