Bernadette Chirac, the formidable widow of the former French president Jacques Chirac and a driving force behind his political rise, has died at the age of 93.
As France’s first lady for 12 years, Chirac was a steely behind-the-scenes operator in support of her husband, who served twice as prime minister, 18 years as mayor of Paris and two terms as president.
When he stood back from public life in 2007, she became a politician in her own right as a councillor in the couple’s constituency in Corrèze in central France and announced: “My husband no longer does politics, but I do.”
If asked about her husband at the smart dinners and society events she continued to attend, after he retired she would reply: “He’s looking after the dog.”
Chirac had always said she hoped to predecease her husband; when he died in 2019, she was too frail to attend his state farewell, having made her last public appearance the previous year, when a street in the city of Brive-la-Gaillarde was named after the couple.
Bernadette Thérèse Chodron de Courcel was born into a wealthy, aristocratic Catholic family and was well connected and clever. It was while enrolled at the prestigious Sciences Po university that she met Jacques, a handsome and popular young man. Although her parents were not impressed, convinced he was beneath her social station, the couple married in 1956.
Jacques Chirac’s reputation as a womaniser was well-founded and she described the 63 years they were together as a long lesson in endurance, weathering his notorious infidelities with dry humour.
“At first it was hard. I was heartbroken. Then I got used to it,” she said later in a television documentary. “I told myself that’s how things were and I had to accept it with as much dignity as possible.”
Asked why she never divorced her husband she cited her Catholic upbringing, adding: “And I loved my husband very much.”
In 1998, rumours spread that the Élysée Palace was unable to reach Jacques Chirac on the night Diana, Princess of Wales died in a car crash in Paris, and that he was with an unnamed Italian actor.
Swarmed by photographers and asked to comment, Bernadette, told them: “Calm down. I’m not Claudia Cardinale. Or [Gina] Lollobrigida.”
Chirac refused to be constrained by a ceremonial “wife of” role. She could be funny but also haughty. Though quick with a withering bon mot, her cutting, often ironic put-downs, delivered in a nasal voice, were employed as much against herself as others. Her penchant for head-to-toe designer dressing, Chanel suits, large dark Dior sunglasses and laquered blond hair along with her often regal manner left her wide open to lampooning.
In 2023, Catherine Deneuve played her in the film Bernadette, a comedy about her years at the Élysée Palace.
The couple had two daughters but the illness of their eldest daughter Laurence, who had severe anorexia after contracting meningitis as a teenager and made several suicide attempts, caused deep sorrow. Laurence died of cardiac arrest in 2016, aged 58. Claude, the couple’s younger daughter, became her father’s press and political adviser.
It was the tragedy of Laurence’s illness that prompted Bernadette to become the figurehead for the pièces jaunes (yellow coins) annual collection of low-value coins for charity, which raised millions to help children in hospital.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, confirmed her death on 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.