Anne-Geneviève was the only daughter of Henri II de Bourbon. She was born in the prison of Vincennes, into which her father and mother had been thrown for opposition to Concini, the favourite of Marie de Médicis, who was then regent in the minority of Louis XIII. Anne-Geneviève was educated with great strictness in the convent of the Carmelites in the Rue Saint-Jacques at Paris. Her early years were clouded by the execution of the Duke de Montmorency, her mother's only brother, but later her parents made their peace with the cardinal de Richelieu.

ntroduced into society in 1635, she soon became one of the stars of the Hôtel Rambouillet, at that time the centre of all that was learned and witty in France.
 

After Richelieu's death her father became chief of the council of regency during the minority of Louis XIV, her brother (the Great Condé) won the great victory of Rocroi in 1643, and the duchess became involved in political affairs. Around 1646 she fell in love with the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, the later author of the Maximes, who made use of her love to obtain influence over her brother and thus win honours for himself. The duchess was the guiding spirit of the uprising known as the first Fronde.
She brought over her second brother Armand, Prince de Conti, and her husband to the frondeurs, but she failed to attract Condé himself, whose loyalty to the court overthrew the first Fronde. The second Fronde was for the most part her work. In it she played the most prominent part in attracting to the rebels first Condé and later Turenne.

In 1652, the last year of the war, the duchess was accompanied into Guyenne by the Duke de Nemours, and her intimacy with him gave La Rochefoucauld an excuse for abandoning her. Thus abandoned and in disgrace at court, she turned to religion. She lived chiefly in Normandy until 1663, when her husband died and then she came to Paris. There she became more and more Jansenist in opinion and became the great protectress of them. Her famous letters to the pope are part of the history of Port Royal, and as long as she lived the nuns of Port Royal des Champs were left in safety. Her elder son had to resign his titles and estates because of mental illness. He became a Jesuit under the name of the Abbé d' Orléans. The younger son, after leading a debauched life, was killed leading an unnecessary attack in the passage of the Rhine in 1673. As her health failed, the duchess hardly ever left the convent of the Carmelites in which she had been educated.