Suzanne Necker

Suzanne Necker (born 1737, Crassier, Switzerland—died May 6, 1794, Beaulieu, near Lausanne) was a Swiss writer, the hostess of a notable Parisian salon, and the wife of Jacques Necker, who was the finance minister under King Louis XVI prior to and at the beginning of the French Revolution.

Raised in an impoverished aristocratic family, she received a well-rounded education that spanned from Latin and ancient Greek to sciences such as physics and geometry. She was originally engaged to the English historian Edward Gibbon, but his father broke off the match. In 1764 she married Necker, then a banker, and encouraged him to pursue a political career.

Her salon attracted such figures as the naturalist Georges Buffon, the philosopher and encyclopedic editor Denis Diderot, and authors Jean-François Marmontel and Jean-François de La Harpe. Although overshadowed by her daughter Germaine de Staël’s writing career, Necker was an author in her own right. She wrote books and articles on literary and moral topics. Her surviving works include Des Inhumations précipitées (1790; “Rushed Inhumations”) and the posthumously published Réflexions sur le divorce (1794; “Reflections on Divorce”).

In 1778 Necker established an experimental charity hospital where each patient had a separate bed, a significant departure from the overcrowded Parisian hospitals of the time. She led the hospital for more than 10 years, an experience that influenced her writing, especially Des Inhumations précipitées, in which she discusses how to ethically care for the dead. Now called Necker–Enfants Malades Hospital, it is the leading pediatric hospital in Paris.

After Jacques Necker’s fall from power and final resignation in 1790, the couple returned to Switzerland to spend their later years at Château de Coppet, previously their summer residence that Necker had bought in 1784.

Suzanne Necker’s birth year has been variously identified as 1737 or 1739. Paul-Gabriel d’Haussonville, who was related to Necker and wrote a biography of her (published 1882) based on letters and diaries from Château de Coppet, mentioned that her christening was on June 2, 1737.