Françoise-Louise de Warens, also called Madame de Warens (1699-1768), was the benefactor and mistress of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Without doubt a very controversial woman, abjuring her religion for Catholicism in 1726, she becomes la baronesse de Vuarens. Rousseau meets her on Palm Sunday 1728. From then on, both changed their lives. It was said that she was a spy and a converter for Savoy. She gave Rousseau the education he lacked and fulfiled his hungry spirit, his need for love.
She had a very liberal life for a woman of her epoque. She deserted her marriage to M. de Warens in 1726 after failing in a clothing business that she was putting together. Rousseau never forgot her. When he returned from England in 1767 and was wandering through France and Switzerland, he found out in August of 1768 that his maman, as he called her, had died in poverty in March of that year.