Early Life
Born in Qingdao, China, she was a daughter of Hugo Reiss (1879-), a German-born Jewish diplomat who served as Brazil's consul in Shanghai, China. Her mother, a Roman Catholic, was Ignatia Mary Murphy (1891-), a native of San Francisco, California.
She had two sisters, Barry J. Reiss-Brian (died 1970, unmarried) and Huguette Reiss Gerard Hoguet (died 1994, married twice). By her mother's second marriage to Guy L. A. Brian, she had two half-sisters: Marie-Brigitte (1928-, Countess Bernard de La Rochefoucauld) and Patricia (1930-, Madame Jacques Bemberg).
All five daughters were raised as Catholics, with the three Reiss girls spending their infancy and early childhood in Shanghai, China. After Mary Reiss's marriage to Guy Brian, the family lived in Paris, and Jane graduated from the Convent des Oiseaux, a fashionable Catholic school in Neuilly, France; its alumni included the future Vietnamese empress Nam Phuong.
Read more about this topic: Jane Engelhard
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The conviction that the best way to prepare children for a harsh, rapidly changing world is to introduce formal instruction at an early age is wrong. There is simply no evidence to support it, and considerable evidence against it. Starting children early academically has not worked in the past and is not working now.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“I went back to my work, but now without enthusiasm. I had looked through an open door that I was not willing to see shut upon me. I began to reflect upon life rather seriously for a girl of twelve or thirteen. What was I here for? What could I make of myself? Must I submit to be carried along with the current, and do just what everybody else did?”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)