Born Paris 1811, died St Josse-ten-Noode (near Brussels) 1875.
Marie displayed a precocious talent for the piano, studying notably with Ignaz Moscheles and Frederic Kalkbrenner, and she was to perform her first public concerto, in Brussels, aged 14. In 1830, she began teaching the piano in a girls' school in the Marais in Paris and was admired by Berlioz who also taught at the school. The admiration was to turn to love and she became engaged to Berlioz when the latter won the Prix de Rome. However, only three months after her fiance's departure for Rome (December 1830) she was to marry Camille Pleyel, although she preserved her independence by continuing to teach. She was widely admired as a player, and Chopin was to dedicate three Nocturnes to her in 1833. On the collapse of her marriage with Camille, she resumed her concert career, meeting with great success in Bonn, Dresden, Leipzig, Vienna, St Petersburg, Paris and London. After one of her English concerts she was described as a ‘celestial pianofortist'. In 1842 she took up residence in Brussels and taught piano at the Brussels Conservatory until three years before her death. Her teaching was so renowned that it was held that she had created a Belgian school of piano playing. She was famous for her astonishingly accomplished and easy technique, the strength, charm and poetry of her playing, and she was admired by Mendelssohn and Liszt, the latter a personal friend with whom she played piano duets and who was to dedicate compositions to her.
Source: Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001 s.v., Pleyel, Marie, p. 923