 Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie was born in Les Trois-Îlets, Martinique, to a wealthy French family that owned a sugarcane plantation, which is now a museum.She was the eldest daughter of Joseph-Gaspard Tascher (1735–1790), knight, Seigneur de (lord of) la Pagerie, lieutenant of "Troupes de Marine", and his wife, the former Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois (1736–1807), whose maternal grandfather, Anthony Brown, may have been Irish.The family struggled financially after hurricanes destroyed their estate in 1766.