Jeanne Delanoue was the youngest of twelve children of a Saumur shopkeeping family, took over the family shop at twenty-five on her mother's death, and ran it as a hard-headed Loire-valley businesswoman for several years. Her conversion, around 1693, was sudden and complete: she gave away her family stock, closed the shop, and turned the family house into a small hostel for poor pilgrims travelling to and from the great Saumur shrines.
Her work expanded over the next two decades. By 1704 she had established the small community of Sisters of Saint Anne of Providence (Soeurs de Sainte-Anne de la Providence), an unenclosed congregation dedicated to free hospitality for poor pilgrims, free education for the city's poor girls, and the care of orphans and the abandoned poor of Saumur. The congregation grew to over a hundred sisters by her death.
She died at Saumur on August 17, 1736. Canonized 1982. The Sisters of Sainte-Anne de la Providence have continued in the Anjou and (since the late 19th century) in mission territories in Africa and Madagascar.