In May 1868, while in Nice, Alexander Herzen commissioned two photo portraits of his daughter Liza (diminutive from Yelizaveta). He presented one of the portraits to his daughter Natalya and the other to his second wife Natalya Tuchkova-Ogareva.

Herzen wrote to Natalya, “Both photos portray Liza well. I was with her at the time, so I was responsible for the hairstyle — but it’s not too bad. Yes, she is a very bright girl, and if you were so inclined, you could do her good…”

Born in September 1858, Liza was Alexander Herzen’s youngest child, who had to live in a state of uncertainty and constant fighting from birth. Herzen and Tuchkova-Ogareva were unable to legalize their union, and he had to conceal the fact that he was Liza’s father from both the public eye and his other children to avoid further complicating an already strained situation at home. Liza’s legal father was Herzen’s friend and Tuchkova-Ogareva’s former husband Nikolay Ogarev.

Natalya Tuchkova-Ogareva and Alexander Herzen often argued over their daughter: Natalya threatened Herzen that she would take Liza to Russia and deprive him of seeing her. She wanted Herzen to pay less attention to politics and more to his family, but Herzen found it impossible to manage. Tuchkova-Ogareva wrote, “I was born to cause grief to those I love.” Nikolay Ogarev described his ex-wife,

Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev both agreed that Natalya Tuchkova-Ogareva was raising Herzen’s daughter in an atmosphere of “crying and despair.” Liza often heard her mother speak about death, suicide, and grief. On January 6, 1866, Tuchkova herself wrote the following to Herzen, “Poor child, she is deprived of so much, she is like a blooming flower growing amid a graveyard.”

Yelizaveta Herzen was buried in Nice next to her father.