Bernadette Chirac, former French first lady, dead at 93

DPASat, June 6, 2026 at 12:55 PM UTC1 min readAdd Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.

France's former first lady, Bernadette Chirac, has died at the age of 93.

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the widow of former president Jacques Chirac on Saturday in a post on X.

"A generous lady has left us. The nation shares in the grief of her family, her loved ones and all those who loved her," Macron wrote.

Bernadette Chirac was popular with the people of France and advised her husband throughout his long political career.

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"She is the woman of my life; we achieved so much together," Jacques Chirac wrote in his memoirs. He died in 2019 at the age of 86.

To this day, Bernadette Chirac remains the only French first lady to have held political office herself. From 1979 to 2015, she was a member of the general council of the Corrèze department.

The couple met at the elite Parisian university Sciences Po and married in 1956. Jacques Chirac was president of France from 1995 to 2007, after having served twice as prime minister and as mayor of Paris.