Wherever the youthful maiden appeared she was noticed for her extreme beauty, as well as talked about for her wonderful talents, and the general interest in her professional career seemed to go hand in hand with admiration of her rare personal loveliness. She tells us, in her memoirs, of several men enamored of her, who bespoke portraits from her hand in the hope, during the sittings, of making progress in her favor; but her love for art, as well as the principles of morality and religion in which she had been reared, rendered her proof against all such attempts to undermine her virtue. When only fifteen years old she painted a portrait of her mother, which proved so admirable a piece of work that Vernet counseled her to present it to the Academy with an application for admission. Elizabeth’s extreme youth prevented her being received as a member, but she was permitted, a few years later, to be present at all the public sittings of the Academy. It was about this time that she became acquainted with Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun, a painter and picture-dealer, who was then considered one of the first connoisseurs of Europe. He paid devoted attention to the lovely young artist, inducing her to visit his rare and rich collection for the purpose of study, while he manifested the deepest interest in her success. Six months after his introduction he became a suitor for her hand. She says, in her autobiography, “I was far from the thought of marrying M. Le Brun, although he possessed a handsome face and agreeable person; but my mother, who imagined him very rich, never ceased urging me not to refuse so advantageous a proposal. So at length I yielded; but the marriage was only an exchange of one kind of trouble for another. Not that M. Le Brun was a bad-hearted man. His character showed a mixture of softness and vehemence; and his complaisance to every one made him popular. But he was unhappily too fond of the society of disreputable females, and this degrading propensity led him to a passion for gaming that ruined both of us in point of fortune. So completely had he run through all we possessed, that in 1789 I had not twenty francs for my journey out of France, although my earnings had amounted to more than a million.”