Louise Farrenc, born Jeanne-Louise Dumont, was a French pianist, composer and music educator. She was born in Paris into the family of Jacques-Edme Dumont, a prominent fourth-generation sculptor; her brother Auguste Dumont also became a sculptor. She showed artistic ability early, began studying music at six and also drew well. Her piano teachers included Anne-Cécile Soria, a pupil of Muzio Clementi, and she studied with Antonín Reicha at the Paris Conservatory, later working with Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Hummel.
In 1821 she married the flautist Aristide Farrenc, adopted his surname and performed in concert with him. He became her impresario and the publisher of her compositions. During the 1820s and early 1830s, she wrote piano pieces for her own performances, before expanding her work as a composer. Robert Schumann praised her Variations on a Russian Theme in 1836.
Farrenc wrote three symphonies, produced in 1843, 1846 and 1849, as well as overtures, piano music and chamber ensembles. Her Nonet was premiered in 1850 with the participation of Joseph Joachim. Her music was valued by Schumann, Hector Berlioz, Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt. She received prizes from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1861 and 1869. François-Joseph Fétis wrote that the dominance of theatre in French musical life limited the recognition of her symphonic and chamber works despite her gifts and the esteem in which specialists held them.
From 1842 to 1872, Farrenc taught piano at the Paris Conservatory. Her daughter, Victorine, a Conservatory piano graduate, performed several times with her mother but died of tuberculosis in 1859. Farrenc did not perform for several years after her daughter’s death and wrote no more music. Alongside teaching, she prepared the multi-volume piano-music anthology Treasury of Pianists, issued by the publishing house founded by her husband. Twenty-three volumes appeared, the first seven prepared with Aristide Farrenc, and the collection included important publications, among them first editions of several pieces by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
Her output comprises 49 numbered works. Although it long fell into obscurity, her piano and chamber music has been performed actively in recent decades. The German Linos Ensemble recorded her trios and quintets, while the North German Radio Orchestra conducted by Johannes Goritzki recorded her overtures and symphonies in 2004. A retrospective of her work was presented at the Louvre concert auditorium in 2005.