Le Blond (Aubrey; Burnaby) Elizabeth Alice Frances (1861–1934), mountaineer, photographer, traveller, and writer, was the only child of Sir St Vincent Bentinck Hawkins-Whitshed (1837–71) of Killincarrick House, Greystones, Co. Wicklow, and Anne Alicia Hawkins-Whitshed (d. 1908), daughter of the Hon. the Rev. John G. Handcock, rector of Annaduff, Co. Leitrim. Brought up at Killincarrick House, she received a patchy education from her governess. At the end of her first London season she married, in June 1879, Colonel Frederick Burnaby, a distinguished and flamboyant soldier, well connected socially with what was known as ‘the Prince of Wales's set’ (Le Blond, 28) and some twenty years her senior. The birth of a son the following May left her in poor health, and, after a period resident in Algiers, she was recommended to winter in Switzerland. Although she appears to have had no previous interest in climbing, soon after her move there she became engrossed in the sport, and by the end of her first summer in Switzerland she had made two ascents of Mont Blanc. According to her own account her passion for climbing ‘knocked from me the shackles of conventionality’ (Le Blond, 91). She was, however, careful to avoid causing offence, and climbed wearing a skirt, which she changed for breeches only when out of public sight. Despite such efforts, her new-found independence shocked her social circle.
Her enthusiasm for mountaineering led to her taking up both photography and writing. An early pioneer of snow photography, she took her camera with her on climbing expeditions, the photographs from which often illustrated her books. The first of these, The high Alps in winter (1883), was soon followed by contributions to Vanity Fair. After her husband was killed attempting to relieve General Gordon at the battle of Abu Klea in January 1885, she spent most of her time in Switzerland, becoming a central figure in the English community based in St Moritz. She was a founder member of the St Moritz Aid Fund, which provided assistance to those in poor health unable to finance a trip to Switzerland, and her alpine photographs were frequently sold in aid of the fund. Among her other great passions were cycling and skating. After passing the women's test for the St Moritz Skating Association, she became the first woman to pass the men's test and went on to hold the association's gold badge. Always eager to promote women's climbing, in 1907 she was appointed foundation president of the Ladies' Alpine Club.
In 1886 she remarried, but her second husband, Dr John Frederick Main, died in 1892. She married again in June 1900, and with her third husband, Francis Bernard Aubrey Le Blond of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, travelled extensively; in the years before the Great War they visited Egypt, Ceylon, China, Japan, and Korea (1912), and Russia (1913). She continued writing, producing several further publications on climbing, notably High life and towers of silence (1886), My home in the Alps (1892), Hints on snow photography (1895), Adventures on the roof of the world (1904), and Mountaineering in the land of the midnight sun (1908), which she based on her experiences climbing in the Norwegian Arctic circle, where she made nineteen new ascents. She also wrote a travelogue, Cities and sights of Spain (1900), and a memoir of one of her forebears, Charlotte Sophie, countess of Bentinck (1912). Having been asked to provided the illustrations for H. Inigo Trigg's The art of garden design in Italy (1906), she produced her own work, A guide to old gardens of Italy, in 1913.
After the outbreak of war she spent two years working as a volunteer in a French military hospital in Dieppe, before taking charge of the appeal department of the British Ambulance Committee (1916–18), which supplied transport for the French wounded in the Vosges. As its manager she was successful in raising the £1,200 required each week to maintain the service. After the armistice she was engaged by the War Office to give lectures to British troops stationed in France and England. Having witnessed at first hand the devastation of northern France, she worked closely with the British Empire Fund to raise money for the restoration of Rheims cathedral, and after serving as its honorary secretary (1920–24) attended the cathedral's formal re-opening in May 1927. A founding honorary secretary of the Anglo-French Luncheon Club (1926), she also played an active role in having a statue of General Foch erected in London.
Among Le Blond's later publications were her autobiography Day in, day out (1928), The Dunkelgraf mystery (1929, with O. V. Maeckel), and translations from the French of the autobiography of Charlotte Amalie, princess of Aldenburg (1913), and Marshal Lyautey's Lettres du Tonkin et de Madagascar (1932). Throughout the 1920s she made numerous visits to Canada and the United States, her son having settled in California. A member (from 1886) and medallist of the Royal Photographic Society, she was a regular contributor to their exhibitions from 1889 to 1901. She was made a member of the Légion d'honneur in 1933. She died at Llandridod Wells, Radnorshire, Wales, on 27 July 1934. Her portrait by Mary Macleod is reproduced in the frontispiece of her autobiography.