When she is seven years old, Marie becomes the pupil of professor F. B. Hamma in Stuttgart.

Her mother takes her along to Paris when she is ten years old, to present her to Henri Herz, famous piano teacher to the Conservatory of Paris. He accepts her as pupil in 1857, in spite of her youth. Marie works with him until she can be registered with the Conservatory.

After only four months of course, she brilliantly obtains there the First Prize for Piano in 1862, less than sixteen years old. She is the penultimate candidate and presents herself after twenty other girls.

A critic reports : « She restored freshness and life to the piece ; one believed to have never heard it yet, so much she marked it with the seal of her individual nature. Her higher mechanism, her beautiful style, her play deliciously moderate, with an irreproachable purity, an exquisite taste, a lofty elegance, constantly filled the audience with wonder. » (Revue et Gazette musciale de Paris, July 27, 1862.)