French actress, the daughter of actors Charles Joseph Vanhove and Andrée Coche. She joined the Comédie-Française in 1785 at the age of 14 in the role of Iphigenia in the play by Racine. Described as beautiful and blonde, she married a violinist.
During the French Revolution, on the night of 2 September 1793, she was arrested with 12 other players in the Théâtre Français who remained loyal to the monarchy, as “suspicious” and imprisoned at the Sainte-Pelagie Prison, for playing a theatrical performance deemed seditious: Pamela. She was released five months later and resumed comedy.
She met Talma, one of the most famous actors of his time, who was married to the dancer Julie Carreau. He led a large company financed by his wife. They quickly began a life together. Julie, tired, humiliated and half-ruined, accepted divorce.
They married. Caroline took over the reins of their household management and later attempted to get a divorce after Talma had affairs and ran up debts.
Caroline withdrew from the theatre, recovered part of the money she advanced to the Talma household and made a quiet life in a small hotel surrounded by gardens, accompanied by her friends. She enjoyed painting, drawing, but mostly wrote for youth or the theatre.
On the death of Talma in 1826, she married Count Chalot, a longtime friend with whom she loved to talk while walking. But he soon died. The “countess Vanhove” spent her days on the Champs Elysees in her carriage, and often went to the theatre.
She died on 11 April 1860, at the age of 90, in her Parisian hotel suite.
Link to Wikipedia biography