Birth Anniversary: Joséphine de Beauharnais — June 23, 1763

Joséphine de Beauharnais was born on the island of Martinique on 23 June 1763 and became, thirty-three years later, the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte and empress of the French. After their divorce she kept the Château de Malmaison outside Paris, which she had bought in 1799, and lived there until her death in 1814 — the château where, weeks before, she had received the very monarchs who had just defeated her former husband.