Marie Tussaud was born in France in 1761. From the age of six, she was raised in Switzerland by a physician. Dr. Philippe Curtius had a talent for wax sculptures, a skill he passed on to Tussaud. By the time she was twenty, she had become an expert in wax modeling. After barely escaping execution during the Reign of Terror in in the late 1790s, she toured the British Isles with her waxworks for over thirty years before founding her first museum in London in 1835. Madame Tussauds now has about 25 worldwide locations. The only one in Australia opened in 2012 at the King Street Wharf.
