Portrait de Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, duchesse d'Orléans en Hébé.

Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti was a princess of the blood royal, born in 1726, who later married Louis d'Orléans and became Duchess of Orléans. Nattier depicted her in 1732 as Hébé, goddess of youth—an appropriate conceit for a girl of six, though it is more likely she was slightly older at the time of sitting or the date refers to an earlier version. The Condé Museum at Chantilly, one of France's great aristocratic collections assembled by the Dukes of Aumale and donated to the Institut de France, holds a remarkable group of French paintings including several by Nattier. The Bourbon-Conti family was among the grandest of the princes of the blood—related to the king but not in the direct line of succession—and commissioning portraits from Nattier was both a practical necessity and a statement of cultural alignment with the taste of the royal court. The Hébé conceit appears frequently in Nattier's work for young noble women, establishing a template he would return to throughout his career.

Depicting a young subject as a goddess required Nattier to balance the formal demands of mythological allegory with the naturalness appropriate to a child's portrait. The delicacy of handling in the skin and hair reflects his finest technique for young sitters.