Laura Pulteney, 1st Countess of Bath

Pultney was born Henrietta Laura Johnstone in Westminster, the only child of the wealthy William Johnstone, later Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet, and his wife, Frances Pulteney, daughter of Daniel Pulteney. They moved to Bath House on Piccadilly, where she was raised. On her mother's death in 1782, she inherited the Pulteney estates. Initially educated at home, Pulteney was educated at the convent of Montparnasse in Paris, completing it in 1783. There she was visited by her kinswoman, the Countess of Hopetoun, her friend Lady Belmore and the Countess of Dundonald, the latter of whom introduced her to Parisian society. As a young woman, Pulteney spent time at Sudborough in Northamptonshire (later endowing a school there as well as in Clewer, Berkshire) where her neighbour was Archibald Alison, to whom she agreed to be a godmother to his son, William.

Although Pulteney's father never sought political office, he did procure a peerage for her and she was created Baroness of Bath, in the County of Somerset, in 1792,^[1] aged twenty-six. Despite her mother's family having previously held the earldom of Bath until its extinction in 1764, a marquessate of Bath had been created for the 3rd Viscount Weymouth in 1789. Some peers attempted to have her peerage cancelled due to the unprecedented use of the same place name in two separate peerages for separate people. This was rejected and she was further elevated as Countess of Bath, in the County of Somerset, in 1803,^[2] although it is a general rule that, wherever possible, peerage titles should not be duplicated. On 17 July 1794, she married her father's first cousin, Sir James Murray, 7th Baronet and he took the additional surname of Pulteney.