Marie Charlotte de La Tour d'Auvergne (Marie Sophie Charlotte; 20 December 1729, Paris – 6 September 1763), was a French noblewoman and member of the House of La Tour d'Auvergne. Married into the House of Beauvau, a powerful family originating in Anjou, she had a daughter at the age twenty, and died of smallpox[1] at the age of thirty three. The present Duke of Mouchy branch of the Noailles family are descended from her.
Her father died in 1730, leaving her mother a widow at twenty-three. Her mother died in 1737. As such she became the ward of her uncle Louis Henri, Count of Évreux (comte d'Évreux).
In 1741, her maternal uncle Louis de Lorraine-Harcourt[3] was a proposed candidate for the hand of the 12-year-old, but the marriage never materialised and he died childless in 1747.
She died of smallpox[1] at the Hôtel de Beauvau-Craon, her husband's town house in Lunéville, Lorraine. She and her daughter were heading to Paris from Lorraine when Marie Charlotte caught the illness. Notwithstanding the utmost care,[1] she succumbed to the illness; at the time she was arranging the proposed marriage between her daughter Louise and Armand Louis de Gontaut, Duke of Lauzun.
Lauzun and Louise never married and were both greatly affected by the death of Marie Charlotte – the two were in love – and with the death of Marie Charlotte, Lauzun lost his most valuable ally,[1] regarding a union with Louise and himself. Her daughter was placed in the Abbey of Port Royal[1] in Paris where she remained till her marriage in 1767.
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