Henriette d'Angeville

Henriette d'Angeville (10 March 1794 in Semur-en-Auxois – 13 January 1871 in Lausanne) was the second woman to climb Mont Blanc, and the first to do so unaided (meaning that, although male guides showed her the way up the mountain and carried her supplies, they did not carry her. The first woman to summit the mountain had had to be carried by the guides over certain rough spots.)

Biography Henriette d'Angeville was a descendant of a French aristocratic family. After the French Revolution, her father was imprisoned and her grandfather executed, and the family moved to Bugey in the Rhône-Alpes region. After her father's death, in 1827, she settled in Geneva. An avid walker, for a long time she longed to climb Mont Blanc and finally did so in 1838, becoming the first woman since Maria Paradis in 1808 to climb Western Europe's highest mountain.

D'Angeville continued to climb for twenty-five years, scaling twenty-one more peaks, as well as again summiting Mont Blanc. Her last Alpine ascent was on Oldenhorn, at age 65. In her later years she also became interested in speleology and founded a museum of mineralogy in Lausanne, where she died.

Mont Blanc expedition D'Angeville set off for Mont Blanc in 1838, in the company of Joseph-Marie Couttet, five other guides, and six porters. particularly on rock she climbed as well as the men, The party reached the top of the mountain at 1:15 PM. Toasts were made with champagne, doves were released from the summit to announce their success, and d'Angeville was hoisted on the men's shoulders and cheered. A cannon salute welcomed them on their return to Chamonix. The celebrations the next day also included a special guest, at d'Angeville's request, the now sixty-year-old Maria Paradis.

Recognition Since Paradis, according to her own account, was partly carried up by her guides, d'Angeville is often referred to as the first woman to reach Mont Blanc's summit with her own strength. A street is named for Henriette d'Angeville in Hauteville-Lompnès, near the Angeville castle, acquired by the Angeville family in 1657 and inhabited by Henriette's brother. She is mentioned by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her travel memoir Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands; Stowe had toured extensively through the Alps and had met both Maria Paradis (whom she calls "Marie de Mont Blanc") and d'Angeville, in Geneva.