Count Andrei Shuvalov, chamberlain to Catherine, the future Empress consort to Russia's Tsar Peter III, knows the diarist James Boswell well, and Boswell reports that Shuvalov shared private information regarding the monarch's intimate affairs.

Some of these rumors included that Peter had taken a mistress (Elizabeth Vorontsova), while Catherine will be said to carry on liaisons with Sergei Saltykov, Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov (1734–1783), Alexander Vasilchikov, Grigory Potemkin, Stanisław August Poniatowski, and others.

She has become friends with Princess Ekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, the sister of her husband's mistress, who has introduced her to several powerful political groups that oppose her husband.

Peter III's temperament has become quite unbearable for those who resided in the palace.

He announces trying drills in the morning to male servants, who later join Catherine in her room to sing and dance until late hours.

Catherine becomes pregnant with her second child, Anna, who only lives to four months, in 1759.

Due to various rumors of Catherine's promiscuity, Peter is led to believe he is not the child's biological father and is known to have proclaimed, "Go to the devil!" when Catherine angrily dismissed his accusation.

She thus spends much of this time alone in her own private boudoir to hide away from Peter's abrasive personality.

Pricess Dashkova returns to the Russian capital in 1782 and is at once taken into favor by the empress, who strongly sympathizes with her in her literary tastes, and especially in her desire to elevate Russian to a high place among the literary languages of Europe.

Immediately after her return, the princess was appointed Director of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences (known now as the Russian Academy of Sciences).

Theoretically the head of the Academy was always its President; however, Count Kirill Razumovsky, who had been appointed President in 1746 (when he was just eighteen) played only a nominal role in the Academy, and the actual leadership in the Academy, such as there was, belonged to successive Directors.

Dashkova is the first woman in the world to head a national academy of sciences.

Although not a scientist herself, Dashkova restores the failing institution to prominence and intellectual respectability.

This comes at a critical time in the history of science, its transformation from what is called natural philosophy, often practiced by gifted amateurs, to a professional enterprise.

Russian princess Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova had traveled in Ireland, where she can be seen watching a review of the Irish Volunteers in a picture by Francis Wheatley in November 1779.

She is friends with Georgiana Shipley, daughter of Jonathan Shipley, in London.

She meets Benjamin Franklin in Paris on February 3, 1781, just this one time.

Franklin is seventy-five and Dashkova is thirty-seven.

Franklin and Dashkova are both evidently impressed with each other.

Franklin invites Dashkova to become the first woman to join the American Philosophical Society, and the only one to be so honored for another eighty years.

Later, Dashkova will reciprocate by making him the first American member of the Russian Academy.