The youngest child of King Henri IV of France and Marie de' Medici, she was only fourteen when negotiations for her marriage to Charles, Prince of Wales, began. By the time these negotiations were concluded, Charles had become King of England.
They married first by proxy and later in person on 13 June 1625 at Canterbury. The influence of the Duke of Buckingham over Charles I made their first years unhappy, and it was only after Buckingham's assassination that they were able to develop a closer and loving relationship.
For several years she took part in masques and plays and had no interest in politics until, in 1637, a papal agent was placed in her court. This agent, George Cann, a Scotsman, caused alarm with the conversions amongst the nobility and gentry. Henrietta Maria supported her husband in his struggle with Parliament. At Oxford, on 3 June 1644 when seven months pregnant, she had to leave the king to go to Exeter where, on 16 June 1644, she gave birth to her youngest child, Henrietta. Shortly afterwards she escaped to France where she spent her years in exile caring for her children.
However, after her husband's death she alienated herself from her children when she had become too close to Lord Jermyn, her secretary. After her son's restoration she returned to England where Pepys, on 22 November 1660, met her and described her as a "very little plain old woman, and nothing more in her presence in any respect nor garb than any ordinary woman".

In 1661 she went to France to attend her daughter Henrietta's marriage to the Duke of Orleans. She returned to England for a while, only to settle finally in France at Colombes near Paris where she died.
 

Source: Leo van de Pas