Former first lady of France Bernadette Chirac dies at 93

By — Thomas Adamson, Associated Press Thomas Adamson, Associated Press Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/former-first-lady-of-france-bernadette-chirac-dies-at-93 Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Former first lady of France Bernadette Chirac dies at 93 World Jun 6, 2026 5:05 PM EDT PARIS (AP) — Bernadette Chirac, the steel-willed former first lady of France who spent 12 years at the Élysée Palace from 1995 to 2007 beside President Jacques Chirac — weathering his notorious infidelities with dry humor while building her own political power base in rural France — has died. She was 93. President Emmanuel Macron confirmed her death Saturday, saying he and his wife Brigitte had learned with "great sadness" of the passing of a woman who marked French history, and changed the lives of millions through her charity work. "A great lady of the heart has departed," Macron said. READ MORE: Jacques Chirac, former France president who opposed Iraq invasion, dies at 86 For more than half a century, Chirac was the fixed point in her late husband's restless climb — through Parliament, two terms as prime minister, 18 years as mayor of Paris and, in 1995, the presidency. Beyond the ceremonial role of first lady, Chirac became a political presence in her own right, closely watched for her influence around her husband, who died in 2019, and for the dry discipline with which she handled his reputation as a womanizer, a subject she later addressed with unusual frankness. Swarmed by photographers in Corrèze in 1998 — after rumors that Jacques Chirac had been unreachable the night Princess Diana died because he was with an actress — she stepped from her car and deadpanned: "Calm down. I'm not Claudia Cardinale. Or Lollobrigida." She appears in the official photographs with her chin lifted, blond hair lacquered into place, a small handbag on her arm, looking less like a spouse than like an institution. But the caricature never quite contained her. The Chanel suits, dark glasses, nasal voice and withering judgments became part of the national image. Beneath them was a relentless worker and a cold-eyed political operator who, almost alone among the wives of French presidents, built a base of power that was her own. READ MORE: Paris court finds 10 guilty of cyberbullying French first lady Brigitte Macron She was born Bernadette Thérèse Marie Chodron de Courcel on May 18, 1933, in Paris, into money, lineage and Catholic duty. Her father's family included soldiers, industrialists and diplomats; an uncle had served as an aide to Charles de Gaulle in wartime London. But her life would be most marked by her time at the prestigious Sciences Po university in Paris, where she met Jacques Chirac, a handsome and much-courted young man whose appetite for politics would come to define them both. They married in March 1956. The union lasted 63 years and was, by her own account, a long lesson in endurance.