She was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from to , and remained influential as court favourite until her death. Pompadour took charge of the king's schedule and was a valued aide and advisor, despite her frail health and many political enemies.
She secured titles of nobility for herself and her relatives, and built a network of clients and supporters. On 8 February , the Marquise de Pompadour was named as the thirteenth lady-in-waiting to the queen, a position considered the most prestigious at the court, which accorded her with honors.
Pompadour was a major patron of architecture and decorative arts , especially porcelain. She was a patron of the philosophes of the Enlightenment , including Voltaire. Hostile critics at the time generally tarred her as a malevolent political influence, but historians are more favorable, emphasizing her successes as a patron of the arts and a champion of French pride.
Poisson was steward to the Paris brothers, the men primarily responsible for financing the French economy at the time. Such crime at that time was punishable by death; however, he was cleared eight years later and allowed to return to France. At the age of five, Jeanne Antoinette was sent to receive the finest quality education of the day in an Ursuline convent in Poissy, where she gained admiration for her wit and charm.
Jeanne-Antoinette was "coached in elocution by an actor from the Comedie Francaise and the dramatist Crebillon. Pompadour left the fortuneteller livres in her will, for correctly predicting the impossible. When she was married aged 20, she was already somewhat famous throughout the salons of Paris for her beauty, intelligence, and abundance of charm. Her husband, M. Their marriage gave both parties something they desperately needed: Le Normant d'Etioles received "an enormous dowry" that lifted him from relative poverty.
