Jeanne Hugo was born in
Brussels on 29 September 1869, the third child of the journalist
Charles Hugo and his wife Alice Le Haene. Her eldest brother died as an infant prior to her birth. Her surviving older brother was the artist Georges Victor-Hugo. Her paternal grandparents were the writer and politician
Victor Hugo and
Adèle Foucher. She was a great-granddaughter of
Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo and
Sophie Trébuchet. A member of a prominent literary and political family, her paternal grandfather had been
ennobled as a
Pairie de France by
Louis Philippe I in 1845. Born in the last year of the
Second French Empire, Hugo was raised in a staunch
Republican household. Her family, former loyalists to the
Bourbon monarchy, opposed the
Bonapartes. She was the niece of
Léopoldine Hugo,
François-Victor Hugo, and
Adèle Hugo. In 1871 Hugo's father died from a stroke. Her mother later remarried the actor
Édouard Lockroy. Hugo's grandfather did not approve of the new marriage, and took custody of Hugo and her brother, Georges. In 1877 she and her brother were the focus of her grandfather's book of poetry titled ''
L'Art d'être grand-père''. When she was eleven years old, she was gifted a
walrus-
tusk paper cutter by the
Finland-Swedish explorer
Baron Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld from his voyage in the
Arctic Ocean aboard the . Her grandfather died in 1885, leaving her with a vast inheritance. As a young adult, Hugo became a key figure of Parisian
high society during the
Belle Époque of the
French Third Republic and was frequently written about in newspapers. She was the aunt of the artist
Jean Hugo. == Marriages ==