After the death of her son, Marie Henriette left the care of her children almost entirely to governesses and tutors who reportedly abused their authority and treated them badly, while their mother became a distant figure to them and approved of the tutor's strict disciplinarian methods. She wished for her daughters to enter dynastic marriages. She was pleased with Louise's marriage, because it gave herself the opportunity to visit her childhood Hungary often. She was pleased over her daughter Stephanie's prestigious marriage to the Austrian crown prince in 1881. When their son-in-law the Crown prince of Austria committed suicide in the Mayerling incident in 1889, Marie Henriette and Leopold ignored the ban from the Austrian Emperor and attended his funeral. She supported a marriage between her last daughter Clementine and her husband's nephew, the Belgian crown prince, and was devastated when the crown prince died in 1891.