The villa was built in 1830 in the territory of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat when it was part of the town of Villefranche-sur-Mer. It was acquired by David-Désiré Pollonais in 1850. When he became mayor of Villefranche-sur-Mer, he received many personalities. David Désiré Pollonais (Nice 1823-1902), mayor of Villefranche-sur-Mer from 1872 to 1900, comes from a Jewish family, of Polish origin, by his father, who was a fabric salesman in Nice. David-Désiré married Amélie Cohen, the daughter of a Marseilles shipowner and sister of a Second Empire music inspector. He is the father of the journalist and playwright Gaston Pollonnais (1856-1922).

The heirs of David-Désiré Pollonnais sold the villa and its fourteen hectares of gardens in 1904 to King Leopold II of Belgium. He was living in Monaco but he bought Les Cèdres to house his friend, Blanche Zélie Joséphine Delacroix, often called Caroline Delacroix but nicknamed “Très-Belle”. He met her in 1899 when she was only 16 years old and already 64 years old. He made Vaughan’s Baroness and his morganatic wife very beautiful when he felt the end of his days come.

In 1924, the villa was bought by Alexandre Marnier-Lapostolle, owner of the liqueur “Grand Marnier” and the vineyard of Château de Sancerre. He made an exotic garden and an arboretum whose richness is recognized by botanists. Since 1976, the villa belongs to the Marnier-Lapostolle Products Company, which cultivates plants used in the composition of Grand-Marnier liqueur. Villa Les Cèdres has twenty-five heated greenhouses. Twenty thousand species are cultivated, of which fourteen thousand are tropical.