Curator Brussels Royal Museums of Art and History; archaeologist. Destrée attended high school at the Collège de Bellevue in Dinant. He received a BA in philosophy and letters at the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur, Belgium, and he studied law at the Catholic University of Louvain. After a break of several years he returned to Louvain where he enrolled in the Faculty of philosophy and letters. One of his professors, Canon Edmond Reusens (1831-1903) encouraged him to participate in a seminar of archaeology at the University of Bonn in Germany.

Specialist in sculpture, particularly of the Meuse River Valley; curator of sculpture at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. Devigne studied art history and archaeology at the University of Liège, in Belgium. When she obtained her doctoral degree in 1912, she was the first female doctor in art history in Belgium. Her dissertation, on medieval art in the Meuse River Valley, was granted from the University of Liège with Marcel Laurent as her dissertation supervisor. In Paris, she studied with André Michel at the école du Louvre.