Josephine de Beauharnais Biography

Joséphine de Beauharnais (French: [ʒo.ze.fin də‿bo.aʁ.nɛ]; née Marie-Josèphe-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie; 23 June 1763 – 29 May 1814) was the first wife of Napoleon I, and thus the first Empress of the French (commonly called Empress Joséphine or just Joséphine). Although she is often referred to as "Joséphine de Beauharnais", it is not a name she ever used in her lifetime, as "Beauharnais" is the name of her first husband, which she ceased to use upon her marriage to Napoleon, taking the last name "Bonaparte" while she did not use the name "Joséphine" before meeting Napoleon, who was the first to begin calling her such, perhaps from a middle name of "Josephe". In her life before Napoleon, the woman now known as Joséphine went by the name of Rose, or Marie-Rose, Tascher de la Pagerie, later de Beauharnais, and she sometimes reverted to using her maiden-name of Tascher de la Pagerie in later life. After her marriage to the then General Bonaparte, she adopted the name Joséphine Bonaparte and the name of "Rose" faded into her past. The misnomer "Joséphine de Beauharnais" first emerged during the restoration of the Bourbons, who were hesitant to refer to her by either Napoleon's surname or her Imperial title and settled instead on the surname of her late first husband.