Francoise Louise De La Baume Le Blanc La Valliere, duchess de, mistress of Louis XIV., born in Tours in August, 1644, died in Paris, June 6, 1710. After the death of her father, a nobleman and superior officer, her mother married the baron de Saint-Remy, who was attached to the household of the duchess of Orleans. Introduced at court and appointed maid of honor to Henrietta of England, sister-in-law of Louis XIV., Mlle, de La Valliere soon received the homage of several distinguished persons, whose attentions she discountenanced from a feeling of sincere love and admiration for the king. All who became acquainted with the young lady were struck with her modesty, gentleness, and truthfulness, as well as with her personal charms and varied accomplishments; and the most eminent French writers, as Racine, La Fontaine, and Mme. de Sevigne, bestow the highest encomiums upon her virtues and graces. Her love for Louis XIV. was as enthusiastic as it was disinterested; and after having for some time resisted his advances, she became his mistress in 1661, but on several occasions felt impelled by conscientious scruples to desert her lover, who twice succeeded in bringing her back from the convent in which she had taken refuge.

In 1674, however, she left him definitely, and took the veil in the Carmelite convent of the faubourg St. Jacques under the name of Sister Louise. She received the visits of the queen, the duchess of Orleans, and other warm admirers, and, engaged in works of piety and charity, spent the rest of her life in the seclusion of that convent, of which Mme. de Montespan, who had succeeded her as mistress of the king, also eventually became an inmate. She bore four children to the king, two of whom were legitimated, viz., Mlle de Blois, who married the prince of Conti, and the count of Vermandois. She wrote a work entitled Refiexions suv la misericorde de Dieu, par une dame penitente (1680), of which a copy, dated 1688, with corrections by Bossuet, was discovered in the Louvre library by M. Damas-Hinard in 1852. The original as well as the corrected work was edited by M. Romaine Cornut (Paris, 1854). A collection of her letters was published in 1767. Among the works based upon her life, the novel of Mme. de Genlis has attained the greatest popularity. Lebrun's "Magdalen " in the Val-de-Grace in Paris has been said to represent the features of the duchess, but this is now very generally disbelieved.

See Arsene Houssaye, Mlle, de La Valliere et Mme. de Montespan (Paris, 1860). - Her grand-nephew, Louis Cesar de La Valliere (1708-'80), was a celebrated bibliophile.