Félicie de Fauveau was born on January 24, 1801 in Livorno. She is the eldest of a family of 4 children and her father, Alexandre de Fauveau, descends from a family of financiers ennobled in 1740, who settled in Italy shortly before the Revolution.
In 1814, during the Restoration, the de Fauveau family, ruined by bad investments, returned to France and settles in Paris. Her mother held a salon in the neighborhood of the New Athens, close to the Salon of the Duchess of Berry, whom Félicie frequented, being both the same age. It is thanks to these frequentations, that she decides to become an artist. She began by painting, working in the studio of Louis Hersent, then, under the inspiration of Paul Delaroche, she devoted herself as an autodidact to in-depth studies of history, heraldry, medieval art and sculpture with her younger brother Hippolyte. Fauveau’s studio being then next to that of the painter Ary Scheffer, it is there that she found her passion for the Middle Ages.