According to the sugar history webpage in the Marie Galante Land of Histories website, the first mention to the Grand Anse name is in1769 when referring to the nineteen of the twenty existing sugar plantations that continued to exist then, states: “then along the coastal plain of Grand Bourg, seven sugar mills; Selorge (opposite the current Grande Anse factory), Comette (currently Ballet Ouest), Faussecave (Trianon), Martineau (future Poisson distillery), Bonneval, Lamure (Beaurenon), Poisson (actually the future Murat and not the current distillery, Dumoulier's daughter having married Jacques Poisson”.

Further mention is made when it states that Antoine de Retz de Bressoles (1749–1814), born in Auvergne, France who arrived in the Guadeloupe regiment in 1772 and was detached to Marie Galante, in 1773 registered his titles of nobility with the Superior Council of Guadeloupe before marrying Catherine Marie Anne de Selorge (sometimes referred to via her mother's lineage as Catherine Poisson) in 1774, daughter of the Jean Jacques Claude L’Hoste de Selorge marquis de Sainte Marie who owned the future Grande Anse plantation and granddaughter of the King's prosecutor, Claude Antoine Pasquier de Varennes. He continued his military career, including the St. Lucia campaign of 1778, regularly leaving the plantation to be managed. Catherine died in 1780 at the age of twenty nine, leaving him with only one son, Jean Georges de Retz ( -1804), the sole survivor of three siblings who later married Françoise Joseph Bourguignon de Lamure. Jean George and Françoise Joseph also had only one son, Antoine Hippolyte de Retz, Vicomte de Retz (1789–1832) who married his cousin Marie Céleste Alexandrine Charlotte Bourguignon de Lamure.

On February 8, 1843 a massive magnitude eight earthquake known as the Guadeloupe earthquake of 1843 lasting seventy seconds struck near Le Moule, severely impacted agriculture and overall infrastructure in the region and in Marie Galante, prompting a transition from small, animal and wind powered plantation sugar factories to centralized industrial sugar mills. On February 2, 1844 the Paris based La Compagnie des Antilles was established with a capital of 18,000,000 francs. It was established at the initiative of Charles-Alphonse de Chazelles, Vice President of the Colonial Council of Guadeloupe, to industrialize the colony's sugarcane industry following a devastating 1843 earthquake. It’s primary investors were the French sugar equipment manufacturing firm Societé Ch. Derosne et Cail, banker Jacques Laffitte of the J. Laffitte et Cie and Paris sugar refiner Francois Lebaudy (1799–1863) of Lebaudy Frères and a small minority of Guadeloupean investors.

In 1844, La Compagnie des Antilles established the first two central sugar mills: Marly in Sainte-Anne and Zévallos in Le Moule, followed by Engineer and industrialist Paul Daubrée who was a firm believer of separating farm work from industrial work, who created two more using his personal fortune: Acomat in Le Moule and Duval in Petit-Canal. That year, the “Company” purchased various local sugarcane plantations including three hectares of land from Antoine Arthur Alexandre de Retz (1818-1869), the son of Antoine Hyppolyte de Retz and by 1845 had built the brand new Grande Anse central sugar mill equipped with the most modern Cail equipment of the time with steam engines, steam generator and horizontal cane mills, operated by engineer Félix Bon, a former mechanic from Cail sent in 1844 to oversee the assembly who remained on the island. All sugarcane grown by de Retz was then processed at the Grand Anse sugar mill. In its first campaign, Grand Anse processed four thousand five hundred tons of sugarcane from four plantations and produced four thousand quintals of sugar. By comparison, a Marie-Galante sugar plantation produced an average of four hundred seventy four quintals per year.

Between 1846 and 1848 France went through an economic crisis with rising bread and potato prices, a drop in consumption, factory closures, unemployment and poverty in Paris and the provinces. The year 1848 was a tumultuous year with the end of the monarchy when Louis-Philippe abdicated in favor of his grandson the Count of Paris, aged nine who would never take power, the proclamation of the Second Republic andthe formation of a provisional government and in April 27, the decree abolishing slavery in the French colonies, implemented in Martinique on May 23 and in Guadeloupe on May 27. On July 25, 1848 La Compagnie des Antilles went into liquidation and its factories leased to colonists, in the case of Grande-Anse to Antoine Arthur Alexandre de Retz. By 1852 production at the Grande Anse factory was unable to exceed its pre 1848 volume, reaching only two thousand seven hundred quintals due to a lack of sugarcane and manpower.

In March 1853 a new metropolitan company structured as a limited partnership with shares (société en commandite par actions), the Société des Usines Centrales de la Guadeloupe was created as an industrial rescue vehicle and consolidation corporation designed to restart large scale sugar operations after the 1848 financial crash. It took over the assets of the defunct Compagnie des Antilles including direct management and manufacturing operations of the Marly, Zévallos and Bellevue sugar mills, but Grande Anse continued to be operated under a lease agreement by Antoine Arthur Alexandre de Retz. In 1860 only sixty one plantations were left in Marie Galante and GrandeAnse, still managed by Antoine Arthur Alexandre de Retz , directly cultivated three hundred hectares of sugarcane but produced only three thousand quintals of sugar, 30% less than in 1845. That same year De Retz purchased the Quatrième Potel plantation consisting of one hundred hectares.

In 1863, Antoine Arthur Alexandre de Retz paid 150,000 francs to acquire the Grande-Anse factory from the Société des Usines Centrales de la Guadeloupe, which he had been leasing for almost ten years.  The price paid reflected the devaluation of colonial capital after abolition, as the sugar mill was valued at 780,000 francs in the 1848 balance sheet of the Compagnie des Antilles.  In 1865 another son of Antoine Hyppolyte, Georges Antoine de Retz, bought the one hundred ten hectare Trois-Ilets plantation and incorporated it into the Grande Anse sugar mill land holdings. In 1873 Victor Botreau-Roussel sold the Habitation Roussel-Trianon factory to Antoine Arthur Alexandre de Retz eldest son Antoine Hippolyte "Hercule" de Retz.  The De Retz family thus gradually leased or bought back all the land belonging to the ruined landowners in the west of Marie Galante until the beginning of the 20th Century.

The société en commandite (limited partnership) H. de Retz et Cie was established in 1874 by Louise Romaine Dubois-Beauplan, the widow of Antoine Arthur Alexandre de Retz and her four children Antoine Hippolyte "Hercule" de Retz, Amédée Alexandre de Retz, Antonia Mathilde de Retz and Arthur de Retz with a gross valuation of all the houses and the factory of 1,964,900 francs. They decided to concentrate production on a single factory operating under more advantageous conditions. Initially, they chose the Roussell-Trianon factory they had recently acquired because of the sturdiness of its buildings, but opted for Grande Anse. The Roussel-Trianon factory was closed in May 1874 and its machinery and two hundred ten hectares were incorporated into the Grande-Anse sugar mill. During that time, they also acquired the one hundred seventy eight hectares Folle-Anse estate making the Grande-Anse land holdings over one thousand hectares.

For all these acquisitions H. de Retz et Cie incurred in substantial debts and by 1879 H. de Retz et Cie was insolvent and had to negotiate favorable repayment terms with its major creditors including the Bank of Guadeloupe, the Brissoneau Company, the Corhumel Company and the Roubeau Company of Marseille. They were also helped by the Pointe-à-Pitre trading house Charles La Loge et Cie who took over their debts until 1888. After several years of increased production and profitable operations, they were able to reverse their fortunes and by 1903 when H. de Retz et Cie became the Société Anonyme de la Sucrerie de Grande Anse it was then free of any mortgage debt. 

However, in 1910 due to family disagreements, the five De Retz heirs decided to place the Société Anonyme de la Sucrerie de Grande-Anse into voluntary liquidation.  1911, Amédée Alexandre de Retz bought the factory and its outbuildings on his own for the paltry sum of 250,000 francs, whereas it had cost successive generations of the family at least 1,955,000 francs since its establishment. He contributed it to a new Grande Anse Sugar Factory Company with a capital of 700,000 francs, of which he held one thousand three hundred fifty (96.4%) of the shares issued and outstanding and his siblings were completely excluded.

In 1925 Amédée Alexandre de Retz and his wife Marie Hippolyte Alice Bon (1854-1890) the daughter of Félix Étienne Bon, left Guadeloupe to retire to France and live off the income from Grande Anse, leaving the administration to her brother André Bon, who had bought the Pirogue sugar factory just outside of Grand Bourge five years earlier. André Bon, in addition to the income from Pirogue SA of which he was the majority shareholder, received compensation for managing Grande Anse of around 10% of the profits, in addition to a fixed salary and benefits. He was also the managing director until 1942 of the Société Anonyme des Usines de Beauport which managed the Beauport sugar factory, the second largest in Guadeloupe, for which he is paid 10% of the profits, totaling a minimum of 3,250,000 francs between 1926 and 1942.

In 1932 a labor strike and a subsequent fire destroyed the Grande Anse sugar mill which remained largely in ruins for decades. In 1963 no sugar mills were operating in Marie Galante, sugarcane their grown was transported by barge to Pointe-à-Pitre where it was processed at the Darboussier factory. In 1964, this situation led to the creation of the Société Sucrière de Marie-Galante (SOSUMAG) to acquire and resurrect the Grand Anse factory. At the time, SOSUMAG entrusted the technical management of the sugar mill to a private company called SESMAG under a renewable lease agreement, and the administrative management to a departmental public-private partnership: the Guadeloupe Development Company (SODEG). In 1981, when there was a need for increased capital and the agreement with SESMAG was cancelled, the Guadeloupean government owned approximately 86% of SOSUMAG’s share capital and held majority on the board of directors.

On July 31, 1980 after suffering an annual operating loss of five million francs, SESMAG was on the verge of bankruptcy and ceased all activity. An amicable liquidation procedure was agreed that called for SOSUMAG to buy back its shares held by SESMAG, as a result of which SOSUMAG which until then had only been the owner of Grand-Anse, became the manager of its industrial unit and annexes. In 1994 SOSUMAG was liquidated due to severe financial issues and in 1995 the sugar factory was acquired by the Alsatian group Société Sucrière d’Erstein who created Sucrerie Rhumerie de Marie Galante providing the investment necessary to resume operations with the support from Europe, the French government and the region. Today, sugarcane planters in Marie Galante participate in the ownership of Grand Anse through the island’s Société Coopérative d’Intérêt Collectif Agricole des Producteurs Agricoles de la Guadeloupe (SICA) cooperative.