Her influence grew after Jacques Chirac became president in 1995. The role of first lady in France has no constitutional power, but she made the Élysée a place where her approval mattered. She could be loyal, cutting and unforgiving, and understood that campaigns are made not only of speeches and polls but of debts, slights and resentments. Yet she also carved out a space for female authority inside a male political culture that had little interest in sharing power — making it quietly clear that she would not be reduced to “the wife of.”
By 2023, her severe glamour and political instincts had become familiar enough for Catherine Deneuve to play her in “Bernadette,” a comic movie about her years at the Élysée. Her deepest grief stayed mostly private. The Chiracs’ elder daughter, Laurence, developed severe anorexia after meningitis in adolescence and attempted suicide more than once. She never fully recovered and died in 2016 at 58. That ordeal pushed Chirac toward the charitable work that reshaped her public image.
