The Presses Universitaires de France and Frémeaux & Associés offer this biography of Madame de Pompadour, analyzed and explained by Cécile Berly, historian specializing in women in the 18th century. Mistress then favorite of King Louis XV, the bourgeois Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson was ennobled to become the Marquise de Pompadour. Not content with having imposed herself among the aristocracy, Madame de Pompadour, in a few years, gained great influence over the king and became the unofficial Prime Minister of the kingdom. For nearly twenty years, she deeply marked the reign of Louis XV and proved to be a formidable businesswoman. She uses her political power and her fortune to leave her mark in the history of art and architecture. This builder of modest and obscure origins has been the object of all kinds of fantasies that Cécile Berly deconstructs here through a fascinating story.