Through his mother, Dermide was a nephew of the future Emperor Napoleon I.
In 1802, during the Haitian Revolution, Dermide arrived on the island-colony of Saint-Domingue with his parents, as part of the Saint-Domingue expedition.
After his father's death of yellow fever later during the year, Dermide and Pauline were brought back to France.
In 1803, Pauline remarried, this time to Italian nobleman Camillo Borghese, and she took up residence, along with her husband and son, in Rome.
Always a frail child, Dermide died of a fever at the age of six, three months after his uncle became Emperor and two years before his mother's proclamation as Duchess of Guastalla.