Noémie, Baroness Maurice de Rothschild (née Halphen) (1888-1968)

Noémie, Baroness Maurice de Rothschild (née Halphen) was was a French philanthropist and property developer. She was born Noémie Halphen on 29 June 1888 in Paris, France to Jules Halphen and Marie Hermine Rodrigues-Péreire. She was the granddaughter of financier Eugène Péreire of the Sephardic-Jewish Péreire family of Portugal who were banking rivals of the Rothschilds. She married Maurice de Rothschild, a banker and politician. They had a son, Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild (1926-1997).

During the First World War Noémie turned her hôtel particulier in Paris into a hospital. In 1916, she decided to develop a ski resort in France to avoid having to holiday alongside the Germans in St. Moritz, Switzerland. By 1919, she founded Société Française des Hôtels de Montagne, and after the war, she developed the Domaine du Mont d'Arbois, a luxury hotel in Mont d'Arbois near Megève in Haute-Savoie. It was completed in 1921. Noémie died on 15 March 1968 in Paris.