French poet who is best-known for works characterized by a deep sense of pessimism.

Educated by her father in the philosophy of the Encyclopédistes, she traveled to Berlin in 1838 to study German and there married (1843) Paul Ackermann, an Alsatian philologist. Two years later her husband died, and she went to live with her sister at Nice. There she wrote Contes en vers (1855; “Stories in Verse”) and Contes et poésies (1862; “Stories and Poetry”), but her real reputation rests on the Poésies, premières poésies, poésies philosophiques (1874; “Poetry, First Poetry, Philosophical Poetry”), a volume of sombre and powerful verse, expressing her revolt against human suffering.