a Dutch feminist outspoken during the French Revolution. She gave the address Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favour of Men, at the Expense of Women to the French National Convention on 30 December 1790. In 1768 she traveled with Jan Munniks, a young attorney, brother of the celebrated professor of botany Wynoldus Munniks, who had been appointed consul at Messina for the Dutch Republic to France, where she stayed behind because of illness. On the way she met Douwe Sirtema van Grovestins, a former equerry to the widow of Stadtholder William IV of Orange, who became her lover, and introduced her in higher circles. She left him in 1773 and moved to Paris, where she settled in the Palais Royal area, and became a courtesan for the better classes, taking a number of lovers.
