Lili Boulanger came from a musical family. By the age of five she was sitting in on her older sister Nadia's classes at the Paris Conservatoire, and then became a pupil of Louis Vierne. At nineteen she became the first woman to win the Conservatoire's top composition prize, the Prix de Rome, for her cantata Faust et Hélène. Her stay in Rome as part of the prize was cut short by the First World War and ill health. She returned to France and continued to write prolifically in spite of illness. She died of Crohn's Disease at the age of 24.