Anna de Noailles was an early 20th century French poet. Noailles was born Princess Anna Elisabeth Bibesco-Bassaraba de Brancovan in Paris on 15 November 1876. Her Romanian father was Prince Grégoire Bibesco-Bassaraba, son of the Wallachian Prince Gheorghe Bibesco and Zoe Mavrocordato-Bassaraba de Brancovan (the Danubian Principality of Wallachia united with Moldavia in 1862 to form Romania). Her mother, Ralouka (Rachel) Mussurus, was Greek but had been raised in London, and was an accomplished pianist. Noailles later credited her mother with giving the young Anna her love of poetry. Noailles was the middle of three children, with an older brother, Constantin, and a younger sister, Hélène. She was educated at home and spoke English and German as well as French, spending winters in Paris and the rest of the year at the family estate on the south shore of Lake Geneva. At the age of twenty, on 18 August 1897, she married the Count Mathieu Fernand Frédéric Pascal de Noailles (1873-1942), the fourth son of the 7th Duke de Noailles, thereby becoming the Countess de Noailles. Their only child was a son, the Count Anne-Jules de Noailles (1900-1979). Due to health problems, Noailles spent much of her time in her bedroom after 1911, writing and receiving visitors there. Her social circle included some of the most prominent names in Parisian art and society. Noailles' first publication was a collection of poems entitled Le Coeur innombrable (The Innumerable Heart), which appeared in 1901 to great acclaim. Over the next three decades she would publish several more collections as well as three novels and an autobiography of her early years. In 1921, the Académie Française awarded her its Grand Prix de Littérature (Grand Prize for Literature). In 1922 she became the first woman in the Belgian Royal Academy of French Language and Literature. And on 11 January 1931, she became the first woman to receive the high rank of "Commander" in The Legion of Honor. Anna de Noailles died on 30 April 1933 in Paris, at the age of 56.

Catherine Perry was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1952, to parents originally from Boston, Massachusetts. After completing both a Bachelor of Arts (1987) and a Master of Arts (1989) in French at Indiana University, Bloomington, she pursued her Ph.D. in French at Princeton University, which she was awarded in 1995. Perry worked as an instructor of French and Francophone literatures and cultures at the University of Notre Dame during the final two years of her doctorate (1993-1995), becoming an assistant professor in 1995 and an associate professor in 2002. Her teaching and research specialties included intellectual history, gender studies, representations of North Africa in European literature and painting, Francophone literatures from the Maghreb, and French and Francophone cinema. Perry retired from Notre Dame in 2016. Perry published her first monograph, based on her doctoral dissertation, in 2003. Persephone Unbound: Dionysian Aesthetics in the Works of Anna de Noailles (Bucknell University Press) studies Anna de Noailles as a celebrated poet and novelist of the Belle Époque (1871-1914) in relation to the philosophical and aesthetic currents of early 20th-century Europe. Perry has also published on other important poets and writers of this period, such as Marcel Proust, Maurice Barrès, and Ranier Maria Rilke, as well as writers from other periods and continents. She has also written introductions to translated works of French women poets. Having lived in Morocco for over ten years, Perry's interests include work on Moroccan witness literature. Her most recent publication is an edited collection of essays on Muslim women in Francophone literature, film, and the visual arts, Femmes d'islam dans la littérature, le film et l'art (L'Harmattan, 2018).

Perry has received a number of honors and awards for her work in French and Francophone studies. Most notably, she is a Chevalier in the French national order, the Ordre des palmes académiques (March 2006), a former President of the Conseil International d'Études Francophones, and a former Editor in Chief of the Conseil's scholarly journal, Nouvelles Études Francophones.

Gregory Vandenbroucke was born in 1948 in Paris, France to American parents. A broker by profession, Vandenbroucke married Catherine Perry in 1999. The couple live in Niles, Michigan.

Perry and Vandenbroucke built their collection of Anna de Noailles materials over two decades. Their initial interest in collecting material related to Noailles stemmed from Perry's experiences researching the poet in Paris, where she read manuscripts and first editions of Noailles' books that had been published in the early 20th century. Perry and Vandenbroucke found letters and books by Noailles for sale throughout France and began building their collection. They realized that these documents needed a home to protect them from being further dispersed and ultimately lost, ideally one where researchers could benefit from them. Perry and Vandenbroucke donated their collection of Anna de Noailles materials to Notre Dame's Hesburgh Libraries in 2016.