Zoë Lucie Betty (Lucie) de Rothschild (1863-1916)

Zoë Lucie Betty de Rothschild, known as Lucie, was born in Paris on 25 February 1863. On 31 May 1882, aged 19, she married Léon Lambert (1851-1919), the representative of the Rothschild Houses in Brussels. The couple settled in Brussels on the avenue Marnix, but maintained a home in Paris. Lucie brought to Brussels the kind of salon she was familiar with from her childhood at avenue de Marigny.

Lucie and Léon had four children: Claude Lambert (1884-1971), who married Jean Stern (1875-1962) in 1904; Henri Lambert (1887-1933), who married Johanna von Reininghaus (1899-1960) in 1927; Betty Lambert (1894-1969), who in 1912 married Rodolphe von Goldschmidt-Rothschild (1881-1962), then in 1921 Johann von Bonstetten; Renée Lambert (1899-1987), who married Baron Paul de Becker Remy (1897-1953).

She possessed a Rothschild talent for painting and exhibited portraits of her family and social circle in several galleries. Examples of her work include Reynaldo Hahn (1907,  Bibliothèque nationale de France); Louis Duchesne, (1911); Hélène de Zuylen of Nyevelt de Haar (1892, private collection); Monsieur Édouard Fétis (1900, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels.

She died on 15 August 1916 leaving her husband and four children, whose father wrote to them, 'Never forget that you are the children of a mother who personified all that is great, beautiful, noble and pure'.