Pauline Huguette Dreyfus was born in Mulhouse, Alsace, France, on 30 November 1928 to Fernand and Marguerite Dreyfus. At age 4, she began piano lessons. With her cousin Nicole, and also her older brother Pierre, she played duets and improvised, still a child. Her family was well off, her father an industrialist with factories in Mulhouse and Vichy. After WWII was declared, Jewish families were evacuated from the Alsace region. The Dreyfus family fled to Vichy, where young Pauline enrolled in the Clermont-Ferrand conservatory under a pseudonym, finishing her studies with a first prize in piano. She must have taken on students then, as she said later that she had started teaching at age 14. In December 1942, she, her brother, and her father escaped into Switzerland and settled in Geneva where they had relatives. In 1946, she began working with renowned piano teacherLazare Lévy. In 1950, having learned that music historianNorbert Dufourcq was to give special classes on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach at the Conservatoire de Paris, she entered into the class and remained there for four years. In addition to her piano class, she also studied the harpsichord at the Académie Chigiana de Siena under Ruggero Gerlin, who was a student of the renowned harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. In 1958, Dreyfus won the Geneva international harpsichord competition, becoming a prominent figure of ancient Renaissance and Baroque music and of the revival of the harpsichord in France. Her favorite instrument was a harpsichord from Johann Heinrich Hemsch, a German harpsichord maker. His best instruments were made in Paris in the 18th century and are often comparable to those made by Blanchet, another celebrated harpsichord maker. Dreyfus taught at the Schola Cantorum, at the Sorbonne in Paris, and at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance of Lyon. She also taught at the International Academy of Organ and old music of Saint-Maxima-la-Sainte-Baume, and at the Villecroze Academie de Musique.
