Bernadette Chirac

Since 2001, Bernadette has been the patron of Opération Pièces Jaunes, a charity that helps children in French hospitals by collecting small donations. On 3 September 2007, she became the president of the "Fondation Claude-Pompidou" (Claude Pompidou Foundation), following the death of Claude Pompidou, a former First Lady of France.

She was involved in her husband's successful 1995 presidential campaign and her personal popularity saw her play an important role as First Lady in her husband's reelection in 2002. She was also a councillor in Corrèze, the couple's home département.

Born in Paris on 18 May 1933, Bernadette Thérèse Marie Chodron de Courcel was the daughter of Jean-Louis Chodron de Courcel (1907–1985), sales director of Emaux de Briare Inc., and Marguerite de Brondeau d'Urtières (1910–2000). She was the oldest of three children: her sister Catherine was born in 1946 and her brother Jérôme in 1948.

Her family were devout Catholics and she received a strict upbringing from her mother. Her father was called up in 1939 and imprisoned in Germany until the end of the Second World War. In June 1940, she and her mother fled to Lot-et-Garonne, where she attended the Sainte-Marthe school in Agen. From 1941 to 1943, after the occupation of the zone libre, they fled again to Gien in the Loiret. There she attended Sainte-Marie-des-Fleurs-et-des-Fruits school until the return of her father in 1945. The family settled in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. She went to the Paris Institute of Political Studies in 1950 where she met and married her future husband. Like most women at the time, upon marrying, she did not take her degree. ...

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