Biography
She was born Marie Alice Heine at 900 Rue Royale, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. Her French father, Michael Heine, was a scion of a prominent German-rooted Berlin and Paris banking Jewish family and a cousin of poet Heinrich Heine. He was born in France and moved to New Orleans in 1843, and become a successful financier and real-estate developer. Her mother was Amélie Marie Celeste Miltenberger, an architect's daughter, of French Alsatian descent; her family had built three interconnected Miltenberger mansions on Rue Royale.
The American Civil War sent the family back to France, where the teenaged Alice's youth and beauty and her family's wealth, made a great impression in Parisian society. A & M Heine, her father's firm, helped finance Napoleon III’s war with Prussia.
A Roman Catholic by birth, Alice married her first husband, Marie Odet Armand Aimable de La Chapelle, Marquis of Jumilhac, 7th Duke of Richelieu and of Fronsac, on February 27, 1875 in Paris. Their only son, Armand de La Chapelle (born in Paris on 21 December 1875), became the 8th and last Duke of Richelieu and of Fronsac and Marquis of Jumilhac on the death of his father on June 28, 1880. He died in New York City, New York, on 30 June 1952, without issue.
Alice's second marriage, to Prince Albert I of Monaco, Sovereign Prince of Monaco, occurred on October 30, 1889. The prince, whose first wife had been a daughter of a Scottish Duke, was an oceanographer and during his long journeys at sea, Alice took great interest in the Monegasque opera season. The courtesan Caroline Otero, La Belle Otero, who had been a part-time lover of the Prince between 1893 and 1897, recalled the Prince fondly in her memoires and claimed that he wasn't a virile man and suffered from erection difficulty.
She brought a strong business acumen, showing an understanding far beyond her years. Having helped put her husband's principality on a sound financial footing, she would devote her energies to making Monaco one of Europe's great cultural centers with its opera, theater, and the ballet under the direction of the famed Russian impresario, Serge Diaghilev. Her affair with composer Isidore de Lara resulted in Prince Albert slapping her in view of an audience at the Salle Garnier.
The Prince and Princess of Monaco separated judicially on May 30, 1902 (Monaco) and June 3, 1902 (France), but remained married. Upon the Prince's death 20 years later, Alice became the Dowager Princess of Monaco. She did not remarry.
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