She began her career in London's demi-monde , becoming the mistress of a series of wealthy men, culminating in the naval hero Lord Nelson , and was the favourite model and muse of the portraitist George Romney. In , at the age of 26, she married Sir William Hamilton , British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples , where she was a success at court, befriending the queen who was a sister of Marie Antoinette , and meeting Nelson.
She was born Amy Lyon [ 1 ] in Ness near Neston, Cheshire, England, [ 2 ] the daughter of Henry Lyon, a blacksmith [ 1 ] who died when she was two months old. She was baptised on 12 May She was raised by her mother, Mary Kidd later Cadogan , and grandmother, Sarah Kidd, at Hawarden , and received no formal education.
With her grandmother struggling to make ends meet at the age of 60, and after Mary went to London in , Emma began work, aged 12, as a maid at the Hawarden [ 3 ] home of Honoratus Leigh Thomas , a surgeon working in Chester. Only a few months later she was unemployed again and moved to London in the autumn of She worked as a maid for actresses, including Mary Robinson.
At 15, Emma met Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh , who hired her for several months as hostess and entertainer at a lengthy stag party at his Uppark country estate in the South Downs. She is said to have danced nude on his dining room table. Emma soon befriended the Honourable Charles Francis Greville β It was about this time late June-early July that she conceived a child by Fetherstonhaugh. Greville took her in as his mistress on condition that the child was fostered out. Greville kept Emma in a small house at Edgware Row, Paddington Green, London , at this time a village on the rural outskirts of London.
At Greville's request, she changed her name to "Mrs Emma Hart", dressed in modest outfits in subdued colours and eschewed a social life. He arranged for Emma's mother to live with her as housekeeper and chaperone. Greville also taught Emma to enunciate more elegantly, and after a while, started to invite some of his friends to meet her. Seeing an opportunity to make some money by taking a cut of sales, Greville sent her to sit for his friend, the painter George Romney , who was looking for a new model and muse.
