On 9 December 2003, Christie's put up for sale "a highly important miniature of Countess Elisaveta Ksaver'evna Vorontsova (1792-1880)". The catalogue said "Elisaveta, a great niece of Potemkin, met Mikhail Vorontsov (see lot 264) in Paris when she was 23 and married him there in 1819. Born into one of the oldest Polish families, she brought with her a huge family fortune. The couple returned to Russia in 1823 where her husband became governor of the Caucasus until 1844. They richly entertained in their magnificent palace in Odessa, and this is where the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin became a member of her salon. He addressed many lyrical poems to her and they became very close. Count Sollogub described her as 'Short, podgy, with slightly heavy and irregular features, Princess Vorontsova was nevertheless one of the most captivating women of her time. Her whole personality was full of such a sweet and ravishing grace, such a charisma, of a natural elegance, that it is easy to see how men like Pushkin, Raevsky and many, many others fell head over heels in love with her'."
Her husband, Count Vorontsov, appointed von Hartwiss, the rose's breeder, to his job at Nikita Botanic Garden.

Hartwiss was director of the Nikita Botanic Garden as well as providing roses to the Vorontsovs at the Alupka Palace near Yalta. In 1833 he sent the Count a catalogue, handwritten in French, of all the roses in the Garden. This catalogue, presumably in Hartwiss's own hand, is reproduced at the bottom of the article in Russian, "Inhaling the scent of roses" by A.A. Galichenko online at http://kajuta.net/node/1266. The fifth of the reproduced pages, under the heading Rosa indicafragrans, shows exactly how the breeder named this rose:
Comtesse Elizabeth Woronzof