Princess Isabelle first met her third cousin, Prince Henri of Orléans, heir to the Head of the House of Orléans, in 1920 at the home of the Duchess of Chartres, Henri's grandmother who was also a cousin of both of Isabelle's grandparents. Until then, Isabelle was privately educated by governesses and tutors. But after annual visits over the next decade, her parents decided to repatriate their family to Petropolis permanently, where Isabelle attended day school at Notre-Dame-de-Sion while the family took up residence at the old imperial Grão Pará Palace. In 1920, Brazil lifted the law of banishment against its former dynasty and invited them to bring home the remains of Pedro II, although Isabelle's grandfather, the Count of Eu, died at sea during the voyage. With her father, Isabelle visited Naples, Constantinople, Rhodes, Smyrna, Lebanon, Syria, Cairo, Palestine and Jerusalem. The family travelled extensively and much of Isabelle's youth was spent visiting her maternal relatives at their large estate at Chotěboř, Czechoslovakia, Attersee, Austria, and Goluchow, Poland. In 1924, her father's cousin, Prince Adam Czartoryski, placed at the family's disposal, apartments in the palatial Hôtel Lambert on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris, where Isabelle and her siblings undertook their studies. They spent the winter months in a townhouse in Boulogne-sur-Seine. Īfter the deaths of her maternal grandparents, Isabelle's parents moved from the Pavillon des Ministres on the castle grounds into the main Chateau. However, with the agreement of the Duke of Orléans, Head of the House of Orléans to which he belonged paternally, he and his descendants retained the right to use the title Prince/ss of Orléans-Braganza. Though his mother withheld dynastic consent, his parents attended his wedding. In 1908, he renounced his succession rights, and those of his descendants, to marry Bohemian noblewoman Countess Elisabeth Dobrzensky of Dobrzenicz.

In 1891, Dom Pedro de Alcântara became Prince Imperial of Brazil to royalists when his mother became claimant to the throne upon the death of the emperor in exile. She was named for her paternal grandmother, the Princess Imperial. Isabelle was born in a pavilion on the grounds of the Château d'Eu, her paternal grandfather's home in the town of Eu in the Seine-Maritime department of France in Normandy. Her father was the eldest son of Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil, the elder daughter and heiress of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, and Prince Gaston of Orléans, Count of Eu, grandson of Louis Philippe I, the 'citizen king' of the French.

Isabelle as an infant in her mother's arms, circa 1911īorn on 13 August 1911, Princess Isabelle Marie Amélie Louise Victoire Thérèse Jeanne of Orléans-Braganza was the eldest daughter of Dom Pedro de Alcântara, Prince of Grão-Pará, erstwhile heir to the throne of the Empire of Brazil, and his wife, Countess Elisabeth Dobrzensky of Dobrzenicz.

Princess isabella braganza