Rhéa made her debut at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels, in Les doigts de fée, a comedy in five acts by Ernest Legouvé and Eugène Scribe. The following season Rhéa began a two-year engagement playing principle young woman roles at the Théâtre-Français, Rouen, that led to a successful tenure at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, and a subsequent tour of French provinces. In the early 1870s Rhéa commenced a tour of the Russian Empire that in 1876 led to her becoming a leading actress at the French Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg. Rhéa remained at the Imperial until the company disbanded following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on 13 March 1881. Rhéa, who had once met the tsar, witnessed the attack as she watched his carriage pass below the windows of her rehearsal studio just moments before Nikolai Rysakov threw the first bomb.Mlle. Rhea Dead. New-York Tribune, May 23, 1899, p. 2
