French Dancer. Known as the Queen of Montmartre, she was a can-can dancer who was a star of the Moulin Rouge, a popular cabaret in the Pigalle district of Paris. She was also known as "La Goulue", because as an adolescent, she would guzzle cabaret patrons' drinks while dancing. Little is known about her early childhood, but it is believed that she was born into a Jewish family from Alsace that eventually moved to Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris, where her mother worked in a laundry. As an impoverished young girl who loved to dance, she supposedly enjoyed dressing up in laundry customers' expensive clothing and pretending to be a glamorous star on a great stage. At age 16, she was working with her mother in the laundry, but would sneak off behind her mother's back to a dance hall, wearing a customer's "borrowed" dress. She was taken under the wing of Jacques Renaudin, a wine merchant who danced in his spare time under the stage name Valentin le Désossé. They danced at the renowned Moulin Rouge in Montmartre when it first opened, performing an early form of the cancan known as the chahut. The two were instant stars, but it was Weber who stole the show with her outrageously captivating conduct. Booked as a permanent headliner, she became synonymous with the can-can and the Moulin Rouge nightclub. The toast of Paris and the highest paid entertainer of her day, she became one of the favorite subjects for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, immortalized by his portraits and posters of her dancing. Having achieved both fame and fortune, she parted company with the Moulin Rouge in 1895 and struck out on her own. She invested a considerable amount of money into a show that traveled the country as part of a large fair, but her fans who had lined up to buy tickets at the Moulin Rouge did not take to the new setting, and her business venture turned into a dismal failure. Following the closure of her show, she disappeared from the public eye. Suffering from depression, she drank heavily and spent what was left of the small fortune she had accrued while dancing. An alcoholic and destitute, she returned to Montmartre in 1928 and eked out a living selling peanuts, cigarettes, and matches on a street corner near the Moulin Rouge. Few people recognized her in her severely overweight and haggard condition. She died the following year at age 62. Originally interred in the Cimetière de Pantin, her remains were later transferred to the Cimetière de Montmartre.