Chanel was born on 19 August 1883 to an unwed mother Eugénie Jeanne Devolle. She did not have a great childhood and grew up with poverty surrounding her. Her mother Eugénie Jeanne Devolle was a laundry woman in the Charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence in Saumur, France.
Chanel’s father Albert Chanel was a rambling street vendor who peddled work clothes and undergarments for a living.
When Chanel was 12, she lost her mother to bronchitis and her father put Chanel and other daughters to the convent of Aubazine in Central France. Chanel had a tough time in Aubazine, as it was a demanding place, and thus she fled from there to boarding house for Catholic girls in the town of Moulins.