Marie-Jeanne (or Jeanette) Bécu, Comtesse du Barry (19 August 1743 – 8 December, 1793) was the last maîtresse en titre of Louis XV of France and one of the victims of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Jeanne Bécu was born at Vaucouleurs, Lorraine, the illegitimate daughter of Anne Bécu, a woman of enticing beauty, who was variously reported as a seamstress or a cook. Her father was possibly Jean Baptiste Gormand de Vaubernier, a friar known as 'Brother Angel.' During her childhood, her mother's lover, Monsieur Billard-Dumonceaux, father of Jeanne's brother Claude (who died in infancy when only ten months old) funded her education at the convent of Saint-Aure.

At the age of fifteen, Marie-Jeanne moved to Paris, where she worked first as an assistant to a young hairdresser named Lametz (with whom she had a brief relationship which may have produced a daughter, although it is very improbable (Joan Haslip, Madame du Barry-The Wages Of Beauty, 1991, pg.6, TPP publication.), then as a companion (dame de compagnie) to an elderly widow Madame de la Garde, and later as a milliner's assistant in a shop named 'Á la Toilette' owned by a certain Monsieur Labille, where she became a very good friend of his daughter, the future painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. As reflected in art from the time, Jeanne was a remarkably attractive blonde. Her beauty came to the attention of Jean du Barry, a high-class pimp/procurer (Joan Haslip, Madame du Barry-The Wages Of Beauty, 1991, pg.13, TPP publication.) and owner of a casino, in 1763 whilst Jeanne was entertaining in Madame Quisnoy's brothel-casino (Agnes de Stoeckl, Mistress of Versailles, 1966, pg.23, John Murray.). He made her his mistress and helped establish her career as a courtesan in the highest circles of Parisian society, enabling her to take several wealthy men as her lovers.

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