The sitter was the only daughter of Thomas, 1st Lord Camelford and sister and sole heiress of Thomas, 2nd and last Lord Camelford. She married William-Wyndham Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville (d.1834), the famous orator, statesman and minister, in 1792. On her death, without issue in 1864, her estate passed to the Hon. George Fortescue, her husband's nephew.

This picture is after the portrait which Vigée-le Brun painted in Rome in 1792 (see W.H. Helm, Vigée Lebrun, Catalogue of Lebrun's Works, London, c.1910, p. 215).