On Instagram, Camille de Fauconval has passed the 25,000-follower mark. Not bad for a rider who never really went chasing the spotlight. Under the name camilleharasduperou, the young Belgian woman shares her daily life at the Haras du Pérou, near Ittre, with a recipe that has become almost revolutionary on social media: not only talking about herself. Here, the star has four legs, sometimes the character of a mule, often an impeccable mane, and always the final word.

Little girl, big horses

Before the stories, the reels and the comments falling like rails from an oxer, there was a little girl who refused to let anyone brush her hair.

Classic.

Except her mother found the ultimate weapon: horses at the bottom of the garden.

“I was three or four years old, and my mother wanted to brush my hair. I never wanted her to. She would say: ‘Look, look, there are the horses.’ That’s how she managed to brush my hair.”

There you go. Some people discover their calling in a book. Camille found hers somewhere between a hairbrush and a fence.

Elle parle aux chevaux. Beaucoup. Elle ne sait plus très bien ce qu’elle leur racontait. Eux non plus, probablement. Mais le dialogue était lancé.

The virus was there. At three or four, her parents enrolled her in a riding school. And since then, she has never really left the stables.

“Deep down, I always knew it was obvious.”

That obvious thing now has a name: the Haras du Pérou.

An old family farm, near Ittre, passed down by her grandfather, a racehorse breeder.

“Even though I did not know him as a breeder, it is thanks to him that the Haras du Pérou exists.”

Some inheritances smell of notary dust. This one smells of hay, leather and wet boots.

The social network, not the personal cult

At the beginning, Camille did not set out to become a social media figure.

Like any young entrepreneur, she simply wanted to make her stable known.

“I said to myself: either I build a nice website, or I make a real effort to create nice social media pages.”

She chose the second option.

Quelques belles photos. Un compte propre. Une vitrine soignée.

Then one day, with two friends, she shot a short video.

They laughed. A lot. So they did it again.

And that is how a digital strategy turned into a happy accident.

Little by little, Camille discovered editing, the pleasure of storytelling, spoken formats, videos that explain things without lecturing. Her community followed. Then grew. 1K, 5K, 10K. Then it overflowed beyond the indoor arena.

“My mother later said to me: now they would no longer all fit in the outdoor arena.”

n an era when some content creators confuse a front-facing camera with a bathroom mirror, Camille takes a very welcome side road.

She is there, yes. But she is not the subject.

She is the passer-on. The voice. The hand that opens the stable door.

The real stars do not sign autographs

At Camille’s, the stars do not do dodgy product placements.

They eat hay. They shed their coats. They sometimes do exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.

“The stars of my social media are the horses.”

The line could be a slogan.

Better still: an editorial line.

“We are accessories. They are the stars.”

There it is.

Camille puts herself in the picture, but without placing herself at the centre. A huge nuance, especially in the great digital carnival where everyone is trying to turn their breakfast into a historic moment.

She films her horses, other people’s horses, breeders, riders, stallion owners, the behind-the-scenes.

She tells the story. Then she steps aside. Which is probably the best way to exist.

The ordinary, that noble material

Camille’s success also comes from what she does not dress up.

At the Haras du Pérou, life is not a saddle-pad commercial.

here are boxes to muck out. Horses to feed. Cold days.

Moments of grace. Moments that are frankly less Instagrammable.

“I show my daily life, when I muck out the boxes, when I take care of the horses. I can show when my horses do silly things.”

And that is exactly what people love.

Because the equestrian world sometimes loves to present itself in its Sunday best, chin up, fitted jacket and perfectly plaited horse. Camille also shows the other side of the set.

The mud. The winter coat. The little fails.

Real life, in other words.

“I am quite a simple rider.”

Simple, maybe. But not simplistic.

From small daily life to great houses

Social media has also opened doors she could only have dreamed of crossing.

The Haras de Semilly. Grégory Wathelet’s stables to meet his stallions. Behind the scenes at the Fences auctions.

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Renowned breeding places Exceptional horses.

And yet, what stays with Camille is never only the prestige.

It is the encounters. The stories. The passionate people.

“Whether we are in a small stable or with top-level riders, we all have the same daily life. We feed the horses in the morning, we take care of them, we have to go out even when it is cold. When there is a sick horse, you have to look after it. We are all horse lovers.”

The horse brings everyone back to the same level.

Olympic champion, renowned breeder or pony-club instructor: when a haynet has to be filled in the rain, status disappears.

Breeding, that very serious lottery

Camille is not only a stable manager and content creator.

She is also a breeder. And when she talks about breeding, the tone changes a little. Less morning story, more kitchen table with cold coffee, covering notebook and nights spent rebuilding pedigrees in her head.

“Above all, I am passionate about horses, but I am also passionate about breeding. I wanted to share the thought process of a breeder when looking for the right crosses.”

Because from a distance, breeding can sometimes look like a matter of big names. You take the stallion who shines, the one everyone is talking about, the one who ticks every box on paper. You add a mare. You shake. You wait for the superstar.

Spoiler: it does not work like that.

“Most people think you just have to take the best stallion, no matter the mare. But actually, the mare is extremely important in the cross.”

That is the thing Camille likes to bring back to the centre. A foal is not born only from a name printed in bold in a stallion catalogue. It is born from balance. Temperament. Conformation. Movement. A complementarity that no one can guarantee 100%, otherwise breeders would sleep much better.

“Even if you put the best stallion with the best mare, if their qualities do not match together, you will not make the best foal. Of course, it is not an exact science.”

And that is precisely the grey area that fascinates her.

The rational part and the magical part.

The videos at stallion stations, the stallion portraits, the conversations with breeders. All of it tells the same story: behind every birth, there is a decision. And behind every decision, an intuition trying to look respectable in front of genetics.

For Camille, the stallion matters. Obviously. But the mare is not an extra in the credits. She discovered the importance of mares through the Boudrenghien family, during a visit to the Sitte breeding operation.

And that, in a world that loves headline acts, is almost a political statement.

The memory that still gives her goosebumps

When asked about her best memory as a content creator, Camille does not talk about statistics or viral videos.

She talks about an emotion. A moment lived at the Haras de Semilly.

“I recently went to the Haras de Semilly and I really loved it. Because there are so many exchanges with these horse lovers that I cannot always show in the videos.”

Then she mentions a conversation with the breeder of Diamant de Semilly.

And her expression changes. Almost misty-eyed.

“Madame Levallois told me the whole story of Diamant de Semilly. That horse has such a touching, incredible life.

His life is an emotional rollercoaster. By the end of his story, we had tears in our eyes.”

In her voice, you hear the passionate horsewoman. Not the content creator. Not the business owner.

Simply the little girl fascinated by horses.

“It is incredible. She is the breeder of one of the best stallions in the world. She is there, telling me his whole story in the tiniest detail. And in the end, I am just Camille, a small stable manager.”

Just Camille. A sentence she says naturally.

And one that sums her up perfectly.

Dreams have no height limit

Despite the thousands of followers and the doors already opened, Camille still dreams like a passionate horsewoman.

Without strategy. Without a formatted career plan.

Simply with the desire to discover.

“I think I would dream of going to make videos at a stallion station like Schockemöhle.”

Then another name appears. Almost like a dream one does not dare say too loudly.

“Or to go and make videos with a rider like Isabell Werth. That, I think, I do not even know if I am allowed to dream of it.”

She bursts out laughing. But the idea is there.

Because behind the followers, the shoots and the edits, Camille remains first and foremost a horse lover.

Curious. Passionate. Always ready to learn.

Clin d’Œil, the little hero who understood everything

n the Haras du Pérou series, there are several characters.

Don’t Touch, horse mother, pony father, unusual look, killer presence.

Rackham, the collie who is also part of almost every adventure.

And then all the others: Excalibur. Talentina. Rockstar.

But the real darling of the public is called Conquistador.

Or rather, Clin d’Œil.

“He is the little favourite at the moment.”

The young pony’s story is known to her entire community.

At one week old, an accident with his mother cost him an eye.

For weeks, Camille hesitated to talk about it. She took photos, but only from the side of the eye he had left.

Then she chose transparency.

“That was the first time I told myself: I am going to be vulnerable and I am going to say things as they are.”

She posted. She worried. Then the messages came in.

Hundreds. Thousands.

“I realised that my community was incredibly kind.”

Since then, Clin d’Œil has become a mascot.

A symbol. A hero everyone has grown attached to, whose life has become a series: backing, approval, and soon fatherhood.

Sharing, that old-fashioned verb that still works

Today, Camille divides her time between breeding, lessons, managing the haras and creating content.

“Content creation takes up almost half of my working time.”

Four to five afternoons a week.

Shoots. Editing. Emails.

Exchanges. Because deep down, that is what interests her.

The exchange. The sharing.

“Some people think social media is self-glorification. No. The goal is to exchange and to share. When you understand that, it is magical.”

In a world where many people use social media to talk about themselves, Camille de Fauconval uses it to tell other people’s stories.

And if thousands of people follow her today, it is probably not because she is trying to be the star. It is because she has understood something many forget.

Dans une bonne histoire de chevaux, le héros principal n’est jamais celui qui tient les rênes.

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