She was entitled to have the style of Her Royal Highness. At birth, she was given the honorary style Mademoiselle de Chartres. After the marriage of her two older half-sisters, Marie Louise and Anne Marie born of the first marriage of their father to Henrietta of England, she was known as Madame Royale, according to her status as the highest-ranking unmarried princess in France.
To everyone surprise, what had been expected to be an unhappy union turned out to be a marriage of love and happiness. With the birth of her children, Élisabeth Charlotte showed great maternal instinct and a naturally caring character. The marriage produced thirteen children, of which five survived into adulthood. Three of them died within a week in May 1711 due to a smallpox outbreak at the Château de Lunéville, the country seat of the Duke's of Lorraine.
Regent of Lorraine
Her husband died in 1729, leaving his wife Regent of Lorraine for their son, Francis Stephen of Lorraine. After being educated in Vienna, Francis Stephen returned to Lorraine in 1737, ending his mother's tenure as regent.
Élisabeth Charlotte tried to engage her youngest child Anne Charlotte to King Louis XV; this project failed due to the intrigues of Duke of Bourbon; Élisabeth Charlotte then tried to arrange the marriage of Anne Charlotte to her first cousin Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, who had been recently widowed; Louis d'Orléans refused.
Later years
Unable to prevent her son from giving up the duchy of Lorraine to Stanisław Leszczyński when he married the Habsburg heiress, Maria Theresa of Austria, Élisabeth Charlotte moved into the Château d’Haroué in nearby Commercy, which was turned into a sovereign principality for her to enjoy during her dowager years.
Élisabeth Charlotte died of a stroke, on 23 December 1744, one week after her daughter-in-law and grandchild, at the age of sixty-eight. She was the last of her siblings to die and had outlived ten of her thirteen children. Nine months after her death, her son Francis Stephen became Holy Roman Emperor.
She was buried in the funerary chapel of the Dukes of Lorraine in the Saint-François-des-Cordeliers church in Nancy.
Issue
The family of Léopold I of Lorraine in circa 1710 attributed to Jacques Van Schuppen.
Léopold, Hereditary Prince of Lorraine (26 August 1699 – 2 April 1700) died in infancy.
Princess Élisabeth Charlotte of Lorraine (21 October 1700 – 4 May 1711) died of smallpox.
Princess Louise Christine of Lorraine (13 November 1701 – 18 November 1701) died in infancy.
Princess Marie Gabrièle Charlotte of Lorraine (30 December 1702 – 11 May 1711) died of smallpox.
Louis, Hereditary Prince of Lorraine (28 January 1704 – 10 May 1711) died of smallpox.
Princess Joséphine Gabrièle of Lorraine (16 February 1705 – 25 March 1708) died in infancy.
Princess Gabrièle Louise of Lorraine (4 March 1706 – 13 June 1710) died in infancy.
Léopold Clément, Hereditary Prince of Lorraine (25 April 1707 – 4 June 1723) died unmarried.
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