The port town is about West of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. Léogâne is the birthplace of the Taíno queen Anacaona (the town was originally called the Amerindian name "Yaguana" and the city's name is a corruption of that) and of Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité, the wife of the Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758).