"De Rougemont" was born Henri Louis Grin in 1847 in or near Paris, France. In 1898 he began to write about his invented adventures in the British periodical "The Wide World Magazine" under the name Louis De Rougemont. He described his alleged exploits in search of pearls and gold in New Guinea and claimed to have spent thirty years living with Indigenous Australians in the Australian outback. He claimed that the tribe with whom he had lived had worshipped him as a god. He also claimed to have encountered the Gibson expedition of 1874.

"Truth is stranger than fiction

But De Rougemont is stranger than both"

—The Wide World Magazine, June 1899, No. 14