Hereditary Grand Duchess Stéphanie; Credit: © 2017 Cour grand-ducale / Lola Velasco / tous droits réservés

This Sunday 18 February 2018, Her Royal Highness the Hereditary Grand Duchess will celebrate her 34th birthday.

The Countess Stéphanie de Lannoy, who was born in Ronse, Belgium, is the eighth and youngest child of the Count of Lannoy and the late Countess of Lannoy, born Alix della Faille of Leverghem.

On 20 October 2012, Countess Stéphanie de Lannoy married The Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume of Luxembourg in the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Luxembourg City. She subsequently became the Hereditary Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.

After attending primary school in Renaix, Belgium, she went on to study at the Collège Sainte-Odile in northern France for two years and completed her schooling at the Institut de la Vierge Fidèle in Brussels, where she graduated in 2002. At the age of eighteen, she spent a year in Moscow, where she studied the Russian language and literature and continued her practice of the violin.

Princess Stéphanie obtained a degree with high honours in Germanic philology at the Université Catholique de Louvain. During the course of her studies she spent a year at the Humboldt University in Berlin, where she completed a degree in literature, she specialised in the influence of German romanticism on Russian romanticism with a focus on E.T.A. Hoffmann and Pushkin. She extended her stay in Berlin with an internship at the Agence Wallonne à l’Exportation (Walloon Export Agency). After returning from Germany, she worked for an investment company in Brussels.

She likes classical music and literary classics.  She has a particular passion for scouting and was a member for over nine years. She also enjoys skiing and swimming.