Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a musician, musical promoter, and salonièrre. She was the wife of banker and cultural patron Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy and mother of the composer Fanny Hensel, the composer Felix Mendelssohn, the singer and salonnière Rebeckah Mendelssohn Dirichlet and the banker and cellist Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy. A promoter of music and culture, she was the centre of a musical salon in Berlin, which had developed since 1819 from the domestic musical life of the Mendelssohn family and gained considerable importance from 1831 onwards through the activities of her daughter Fanny.