Auditioning in March 1838, she started at the Théâtre-Français in Pierre Corneille's Horace at the age of 17. At this time she began a long liaison with Louis Véron, the former director of the Paris Opera, and subsequently her personal life was a subject of gossip, well documented by biographers and acquaintances of the time. From 1838 in 1842, she lived in a third-floor apartment in Paris's Galerie Véro-Dodat.