Berthe Mouchette, nee Lion, was born in 1846 at Forcalquier, Provence-Alpes-Cotes d’Azur, France.  She studied painting, gained qualifications as an art teacher and developed into an admired artist in her own right, exhibiting regularly at the Salon.
  
She arrived in Melbourne in September 1881 with her husband, Nicholas Emile Mouchette, and her sister, Marie Lion aboard S.S. Liguria from Marseilles intending to open an art school.  The three found lodgings at 3 Nepean Terrace, Gipps Street, East Melbourne, now known as 128 Gipps Street, where Mme Mouchette quickly had a studio erected behind the house and advertised the opening of a life school for female students where they would learn to paint from live models rather than by copying the work of established artists in the Public Gallery. 

Berthe’s husband Emile, who had been Deputy Chancellor of the French Consulate, died in 1884 and after a brief holiday in Noumea it seems the sisters came back reinvigorated and with an appetite for a greater challenge as from the beginning of 1886 they took over the running of Oberwyl, St Kilda, a highly regarded college for young ladies established in 1867. In 1890 Berthe Mouchette established the Alliance Française and ran it from Oberwyl. Her name is remembered in the Berthe Mouchette Competition open to VCE students of French language.  The sisters, however, while excellent teachers were less good at business and in 1892 they were forced to sell the school.   The school survived under other hands until 1930, while the Alliance Française thrives still.

The pair moved to Adelaide almost immediately after the sale of Oberwyl and Berthe continued to teach art and to exhibit her own paintings.  In 1902-03 the sisters spent some months travelling in India and this may have awakened their interest in alternative systems of religion and spirituality for they later became deeply involved in the Theosophical Society.
  
Marie Lion died in Adelaide in 1922 and Berthe returned to France where she died in 1928.  One of her paintings is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria:  The Queen’s Bouquet (1891).

East Melbourne played only a small part in the story of Berthe Mouchette’s life but it was important as the place where her Australian career began.