Henriette Delamarre de Monchaux

Henriette Delamarre de Monchaux, née Valentine Henriette Huberte Delamarre de Monchaux, also known as Valentine Henriette Huberte Lecointre (11 October 1854 – 12 May 1911), was a French naturalist, geologist and paleontologist. She was a pioneer in the latter two disciplines, becoming a specialist in faluns, a type of marine deposit. Her works, notably Les Faluns de La Touraine, support the theory of evolution. She was also a committed feminist. In 1875, she married Pierre Lecointre, a Roman Count. She signed several of her articles as Countess Pierre Lecointre, and she is still sometimes identified by that surname.

Early life and education Henriette Delamarre de Monchaux was the daughter of Mathilde Lyautey and Théodore Didier Delamarre, a painter. Her maternal grandfather was the celebrated General Hubert Joseph Lyautey while her paternal grandfather was Théodore-Casimir Delamarre, a banker and politician.

Henriette Delamarre de Monchaux married Roman Count Pierre Lecointre (born 1841) on 25 August 1875 and took the name Countess Lecointre. With Lecointre, she had two daughters, Marie and Mathilde, and a son, Georges. Both expressed a strong attachment to Roman Catholicism and royalism; Henriette became president of the Association des dames et jeunes filles royalistes of Touraine. The national organisation was led by the Marquise de Mac Mahon.

Countess Lecointre developed an interest in a wide range of subjects, including regionalism through exploring Touraine folklore, and became a committed suffragist. She also developed a scientific interest in geology and paleontology.

Research on falun deposits Falun is a marine sedimentary deposit that is often scattered over vast areas, formed from shell debris. From the 1890s onwards, Countess Lecointre built up a large collection of Miocene fossils and conducted studies on the Touraine cliffs, initially on her own. She then relied on regular exchanges with other European scientists, notably Gustave-Frédéric Dollfus (1850–1931), President of the French Geological Society, who had a major influence on her; Philippe Dautzenberg (1849–1935), a Belgian malacologist and zoologist; Lucien Mayet (1874–1949), a lecturer at the University of Lyon; and Constant Houlbert (1857–1945), an entomologist and professor at the University of Rennes.

Her work was published between 1907 and 1911. Her book Les faluns de Touraine (Tours, 1908) reviews the fossil record and the evolution of ideas on the subject throughout history. In 1909, she collaborated with Lucien Mayet on a publication on mammal remains detectable in falun deposits. The same year, she compared the faunas of the Touraine deposits with those of the Middle Miocene collected in the southeastern United States. She passed on her passion to her son Georges, who became a geologist and paleontologist.

Her son paleontologist Georges Lecointre continued her work, demonstrating the value of falun as an agricultural soil improver. He bequeathed a large part of his family's collections to the Grand-Pressigny Prehistory Museum. It was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of Femmes et Sciences and Jean-François Martins, representing the operating company which runs the Eiffel Tower.

Selected publications Writing as Comtesse Pierre Lecoitre or Valentine Henriette Huberte Lecointre, she published the following: (1908): Les faluns de Tourraine {1908 and 1910): Editions of Études des faluns de Touraine en 1908 et 1909 And together with Lucien Mayer: (1909): Étude sommaire des mammifères fossiles des Faluns de la Touraine : proprement dite: Bossée, le Louroux, Manthelan, La Chapelle-Blanche, Sainte-Maure, Paulmy, Ferrière-Larçon, Savigné-sur-Lathan