Born in London on the 18th September 1794, the soprano Catherine Stephens studied singing for five years from the age of thirteen with the London-based Italian musician Gesualdo Lanza, during which time she sang in Bristol, Bath, Southampton, Ramsgate and Margate and appeared in subordinate parts with an Italian opera company based at London’s Pantheon. From 1813 she studied with the singing master Thomas Welsh and first appeared at Covent Garden that September as Mandane in Thomas Arne’s opera Artaxerxes. Success in that role was followed in October by the role of Polly in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and in November as Clara in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comic opera The Duenna.

Catherine Stephens stayed at Covent Garden until 1822 singing a variety of roles including Susana to John Liston’s Figaro in Henry Rowley Bishop's 1819 adaptation of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and Rowena in an adaptation of Ivanhoe in March 1820. Miss Stephens joined Elliston’s company at Drury Lane in 1822, singing leading roles there for the next five years, and frequently starring in concerts and festivals. She retired in 1835 and on 19th April 1838 married the octogenarian widower George Capel-Coningsby. He died the following April and she survived him by forty-three years, dying in their house at 9, Belgrave Square on 22nd February 1882.

This portrait appeared as a preface to the January 1815 edition of La Belle Assemblée, or Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine, first published in 1806 by the successful London printer John Bell (1745-1831), who owned several other magazines. La Belle Assemblée was primarily a women's magazine with fashion plates, celebrity profiles, sheet music, poetry, fiction, news items and some scientific articles. Its first fashion plates from February 1806 were not coloured, but from November 1806 it came out in two forms, uncoloured at 2s 6d or hand-coloured at 3s 6d, illustrating outfits worn by ladies of rank as well as the latest styles. It was printed monthly for people to compile into volumes, and rather confusingly its illustrations were dated a month ahead. This portrait of Miss Stephens was dated 1st February 1815.