Suzanne Henriette was the penultimate daughter of
Charles de Lorraine, Duke of Elbeuf and his third wife Françoise de
Montault de Navailles (1653-1717), daughter of
Philippe de Montaut-Bénac, Duke de Navailles. Her two older half brothers,
Henri and
Emmanuel Maurice were successively
dukes of Elbeuf and she was known as Mademoiselle d'Elbeuf.
Henri Jules, Prince de Condé (son of
le Grand Condé) had proposed his daughter
Marie Anne, Mademoiselle de Montmorency as a bride for
Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga, ruler of the
Duchies of Mantua and
Montferrat (known in France as
Charles de Gonzague.), but that alliance was not realized. Ferdinando's first wife and cousin,
Anna Isabella Gonzaga, died in August 1703, leaving him childless. Although the
Lorraine-Elbeufs were reckoned among the
princes etrangers at the
court of France, as a
cadet branch of a non-reigning cadet branch (
Guise) of the
House of Lorraine, it was not their custom to marry crowned heads. Nevertheless,
Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat sought Suzanne Henriette's hand in pursuit of a
dynastic alliance with another reigning ducal house under French influence. Mlle. d'Elbeuf married the Duke in
Milan, to which she had been conducted by her grandmother
Catherine Henriette de Bourbon. He died on 5 July 1708, leaving Suzanne Henriette a widow at the age of 22. Suzanne Henriette returned to France. Later she was involved in a lawsuit between
Leopold, Duke of Lorraine and
Anne of Bavaria, Princess de Condé, over inheritance of the Guise fortune. Residing in Paris, she died there in 1710 at the age of 24. She was buried at the Carmel du faubourg Saint-Germain in the crypt of her grandfather, the
Maréchal de Navailles.
Saint-Simon observed that she died in the flower of her youth after a long illness, also noting that, having been considered a beauty, her "bizarre" marriage had been the cause of a sad life. ==Ancestry==