Françoise-Louise de Warens, bornLouise Éléonore de la Tour du Pil, also calledMadame de Warens (31 March 1699[1] – 29 July 1762[2]), was the benefactress andmistress ofJean-Jacques Rousseau.
Warens was born inVevey, into a Swiss Protestant family who had immigrated toAnnecy, but became aRoman Catholic in 1726 in order to receive a church pension which had been instated to increase the spread of Roman Catholicism nearGeneva, then a bastion ofProtestantism.
She was known to have led a liberal life for a woman of her time. She annulled her marriage to M. de Warens in 1726 after failing in a clothing business. Rousseau met her for the first time onPalm Sunday 1728. It was said that she was a spy and a converter forSavoy, then part of theKingdom of Sardinia. Though Warens was originally a teacher to Rousseau, they became sexually engaged after she openly initiated him in the matters of love and "intimacy". Françoise-Louise de Warens died in poverty in 1762 inChambéry, of which Rousseau did not learn until six years afterwards. Rousseau describes his relationship with her in hisConfessions.
