Lady Hester Stanhope was a legend in her own lifetime, a 19th century femme fatale whose name conjured images of intrigue, decadence and romance.

Unconfinable in death as in life, after two burials and 165 years her ashes were finally scattered this month on the lonely hillside which she dominated until her death in 1839.

Stanhope was born on March 12, 1776 in the southern English county of Kent. Her uncle was Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, and in 1803 she moved to London, holding court at Downing Street as his social and political hostess.

Known for her stately beauty and lively conversation, she stayed with Pitt until he died in 1806. In 1810, with her personal life crumbling around her, she decided to travel and set sail in search of adventure.

It was not long in coming. In Athens, Lord Byron swam out to greet her; she was shipwrecked off Rhodes. She borrowed Turkish costume and dressed as a man.

In Cairo, she met the Pasha, in Damascus she refused to wear the veil, in Jerusalem the doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were closed and reopened in her honor.

She traveled to Syria, visited Palmyra dressed as a Bedouin and was crowned Queen of the Desert. She fell ill in an outbreak of plague, traveled to Acre and Nazareth.

In 1814, tired of wandering, she settled in a ruined monastery in south Lebanon, moving three years later to an even more remote property where she stayed until she died.

Standing at the site on the anniversary of her death on June 23, beside olive trees and the scattered archways of what was once a magnificent home, three dozen guests and journalists waited for her ashes to be scattered.

“Do you want me to put her down somewhere?” asked a woman from the British Embassy holding the turquoise urn holding her remains.

Stanhope was a woman who could not be put down. In Lebanon, defying conventions with her shaved head and male dress, she played politics, forming her own militia and wielding great power from her hilltop.