Hereditary Grand Duchess Turning 37 on Thursday

Her Royal Highness the Hededitary Grand Duchess, Princess Stéphanie, will celebrate her 37th birthday on Thursday.

Countess Stéphanie de Lannoy was born in Ronse in Belgium on 18 February 1984. She is the eighth and youngest child of the late Count and Countess of Lannoy.

She became the Hereditary Grand Duchess of Luxembourg on 20 October 2012, when she married His Royal Highness the Hereditary Grand Duke Prince Guillaume. Princess Stéphanie and Prince Guillaume have one son, Prince Charles Jean Philippe Joseph Marie Guillaume, who was born on 10 May 2020 at the Maternité Grande-Duchesse Charlotte in Luxembourg. 

The Hereditary Grand Duchess studied at the École Sancta Maria in Ronse in Belgium. She started her secondary studies at the Collège Sainte-Odile in the north of France and continued at the Institut de la Vierge Fidèle in Brussels, where she obtained her diploma in 2002. At the age of 18, she spent a year in Moscow, where she studied Russian language and literature and continued her practice of the violin.

In addition to her mother tongue, French, Princess Stéphanie is fluent in Luxembourgish, German and English. She obtained a degree in Germanic Philology from the Université Catholique of Louvain. During her studies, she spent a year at the Humboldt University in Berlin, where she completed a degree in literature. 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.

During the Hereditary Grand Ducal couple’s stay in London in 2018 and 2019, Princess Stéphanie studied art history at Sotheby's Institute of Art. 

Since her marriage, Princess Stéphanie has been one of the four members of the board of directors of the Fondation du Grand-Duc et de la Grande-Duchesse. More recently, she granted her High Patronage to Blëtz a.s.b.l., a Luxembourgish association that aims to help people who have suffered a stroke.

Due to her interest in the latest technological advances, Princess Stéphanie granted her High Patronage to the Scienteens Lab, founded by the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LSCB), in 2014. This is the first research laboratory that welcomes high school students in order to stimulate their interest in science. Her Royal Highness also closely follows the progress of organic farming. She is particularly interested in improving production systems in order to generate smaller ecological footprints. Together with Prince Guillaume, she regularly visits local organic farmers and participates in academic sessions on the subject.