Marie Paradis Blanc. The second woman to climb Mont Blanc did so thirty years after her; when Henriette d'Angeville celebrated her successful ascent in Chamonix, she was congratulated by Paradis who had received her special, personal invitation. Marie Paradis Marie Paradis (1778 – 1839) was the first woman to climb Mont Blanc. Paradis was a poor maidservant who lived in Chamonix at that time part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. On 14 July 1808, in the company of renowned mountain guide Jacques Balmat, she became the first woman to climb Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain. The party camped on the Grands Mulets,
Jacques Gabriel Jacques Gabriel Jacques Gabriel (1667–1742) was a French architect, the father of the famous Ange-Jacques Gabriel. His mother was a cousin of Jules Hardouin-Mansart and his father, another Jacques Gabriel was a masonry contractor for the "Bâtiments du Roi", the French royal works, and the designer of the Château de Choisy for the king's cousin, La Grande Mademoiselle. The younger Jacques Gabriel was appointed one of the "controlleurs généraux" at the "Bâtiments du Roi" in 1688, at the age of twenty-one. Two years later he was sent to accompany Robert de Cotte on an eighteen-month sojourn in Italy, sharpening his