{"id":239680,"date":"2026-04-21T00:23:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/239680\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T00:23:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T00:23:16","slug":"obituary-michele-pommier-miami-beach-modeling-pioneer-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/239680\/","title":{"rendered":"Obituary: Michele Pommier, Miami Beach modeling pioneer dies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"In<\/p>\n

In this file photo from Oct. 29, 2003, Miami Beach modeling agency founder Michele Pommier poses by a mirror reflecting an image when she was a model for Virginia Slims\u2019 “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” campaign in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Peter Andrew Bosch<\/p>\n

Miami Herald File<\/p>\n

Michele Pommier, who led a transformation of Miami Beach into a modeling magnet with her namesake agency, was an original Virginia Slims model in the 1970s\u2019 \u201cYou\u2019ve Come a Long Way, Baby\u201d ad campaign.<\/p>\n

At the height of a modeling career that began in 1968, her face was one of the world\u2019s most recognizable. She graced magazine covers like Town & Country, Mademoiselle, McCall\u2019s and Harper\u2019s Bazaar, and she was also the \u201cClairol Model.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pommier modeled alongside pre-\u201cAmerican Gigolo\u201d actress Lauren Hutton with lions and panthers strolling around the pair on the set early in her career. She partied at New York\u2019s Studio 54 in the late-1970s with movie and rock stars that included Mick Jagger, Liza Minnelli and Cher, and jetted off to exotic locales around the world for photo shoots.<\/p>\n

From her upbringing in Connecticut society to the world stage to South Florida after arriving in Coral Gables with husband, pro golfer Peter Diel in 1978, and settling her modeling agency on South Beach soon after, Pommier came a long way, indeed, baby.<\/p>\n

Pommier died of cancer in Miami on April 11 at 78, her family and friends told the Miami Herald. They remember a trailblazer. When she envisioned South Beach as ground zero for a modeling empire, the area was derisively dubbed \u201cGod\u2019s Waiting Room\u201d for its predominant population of senior citizens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Michele Pommier arrived on the scene, the vibrant colors of South Beach had yet to be fully painted onto the Art Deco treasures,\u201d said Lisa Cole, Hilton\u2019s director of communications. \u201cMichele had vision. She saw potential, embraced risk and helped shape Miami Beach\u2019s rise as a global destination. She recognized the city as a stunning backdrop of creativity and possibility for her clients and models.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pommier\u2019s modeling career \"In In this file photo from Jan. 9, 2004, Former “Virginia Slims Girl” model and business woman Michele Pommier sits in the living room of her South Beach condo. Candace Barbot Miami Herald File <\/p>\n

Pommier\u2019s possibilities began when she was 14. Family friend, celebrity photographer Milton Greene, famed for his black and white photographs of Marilyn Monroe inside his New York City studio in 1956, asked to photograph Pommier. Her mom said \u201cOK,\u201d and the image of Pommier in a burlap bag on a hill ran in Life magazine.<\/p>\n

Born to Lorraine and Henri Pommier in Westport, Connecticut, on Feb 27, 1948, Pommier was jazzed after that experience with Greene. She wanted to become a professional model like the celebrities he had photographed, which included Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Judy Garland.<\/p>\n

But her parents wanted her to get an education first. She compromised.<\/p>\n

Greene did her first test shots in New York, and she attended the University of Miami but only for her freshman year. She was selected by a scout for Glamour for the magazine\u2019s \u201cBest Dressed College Students\u201d issue. Eileen Ford saw the spread and signed her to her agency.<\/p>\n

By 1968, her first year with Ford, she earned $75,000, moved to New York City, and paid her sister\u2019s college tuition, she told the Miami Herald in 1996.<\/p>\n

For nearly a decade, she traveled the world, landing magazine covers, the Virginia Slim\u2019s spread \u2014 \u201cthe original Virginia Slims model, Cheryl Tiegs was the blond and I was the brunet,\u201d she told the Herald in 1992. She filmed a commercial for Givenchy and was featured in a worldwide beauty campaign for L\u2019Or\u00e9al Cosmetics.<\/p>\n

And there was that famed photo shoot with model-turned-actress Lauren Hutton with the wild cats<\/a> as accessories.<\/p>\n

\u201cLauren and I were the only two models in New York City who would do it. Can you imagine? I loved it,\u201d she told Ocala Style Magazine in 2019, three years after she and her husband bought a second home there in North Central Florida.<\/p>\n

Leaving modeling for Miami \"In In this file photo from Jan. 9, 2004, Michele Pommier sits in her South Beach offices surrounded by ‘comps’ of her star models. Pommier had a model agency business under the name Michele Pommier Management at the time. Candace Barbot Miami Herald File <\/p>\n

But after nine years in the whirlwind of high-fashion modeling, Pommier, soon to be wed to Diel, was ready to parlay her talents to train others in Miami Beach.<\/p>\n

The oceanfront city may have had the Fontainebleau appearing in movies like 1964\u201ds \u201cGoldfinger,\u201d and landmark restaurant Joe\u2019s Stone Crab, which drew celebrities \u2014 then and now. But it was hardly the glamour scene for modeling shoots across the street from its faded and beige-painted Art Deco hotels.<\/p>\n

NBC\u2019s Michael Mann-helmed crime procedural \u201cMiami Vice<\/a>\u201d and its effect on South Beach\u2019s visual transformation in the mid- and late-1980s was still five years in the future when she opened Michele Pommier Models in 1979, the first modeling agency in Miami Beach.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the \u201870s when I was modeling, you either were a professional and a girl who took it seriously and made it, or you were a girl who lived in clubs and did drugs and had a very, very short career,\u201d Pommier told the Herald in 1996.<\/p>\n

She quit at the same time she had simultaneous covers on Bazaar and Town & Country magazines.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was bored with dressing-room talk. I was tired of living on airplanes. I didn\u2019t want to be a model dragging out a career. I wanted to quit on top.\u201d<\/p>\n

So she set a goal of making Miami Beach a top spot for models.<\/p>\n

Making Miami Beach model friendly \"In In this file photo from Feb. 13, 1996, for a Miami Herald Tropic feature story, Michele Pommier poses with a few of her models at her Miami Beach agency. Jeffery A. Salter Miami Herald File <\/p>\n

\u201cShe brought the stars that filled the pages of Ocean Drive. She gave this place its glamour, its ambition, its sense that anything was possible here. That was Michele,\u201d said Joe\u2019s Stone Crab owner Steven Sawitz.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my family and I moved to South Beach<\/a> in 1992 to launch Ocean Drive magazine, modeling was at the heart of the city\u2019s energy. You couldn\u2019t walk down Ocean Drive without seeing models, portfolios in hand, heading to castings \u2014 there was a sense that something big was unfolding. At the center of it all was Michele Pommier,\u201d said Jacquelynn Powers, former owner and senior editor of Ocean Drive magazine and now editor in chief of Aventura magazine.<\/p>\n

\u201cLong before it was celebrated, Michele was a female founder shaping not just a scene, but an entire era,\u201d Powers said.<\/p>\n

Among the models Pommier helped groom from her South Beach headquarters were Christy Turlington, Charlize Theron and Paula Barbieri.<\/p>\n

By 1996, her Pommier\u2019s modeling agency was one of the biggest in the world, the Herald reported. That December, a Pommier Models Inc. office that she helped design took over The Foundlings\u2019 6,000-plus square-foot space in the Sterling Building at 927 Lincoln Rd.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe gutted the whole place,\u201d Pommier told the Herald at the time. \u201cAnd we enclosed the whole terrace in the back. It\u2019s all windows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her agency\u2019s several offices at the time, which included one in Atlanta, represented 800 models.<\/p>\n

Along with figures like Miami Design Preservation League co-founder Barbara Capitman<\/a>, Pommier was driven to advocate for the preservation and restoration of Miami Beach\u2019s Art Deco buildings where she also had her agencies \u2014 one of them, a lavish office two doors from Joe\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the very beginning, I saw something in her that reminded me deeply of Mom,\u201d he said in reference to restaurant matriarch Jo Ann Bass, \u201ctwo fearless visionaries who carried the torch for this city, refusing to let it be anything less than extraordinary,\u201d Sawitz said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlongside Barbara Capitman, Michael Mann and Christo<\/a>, she helped forge the identity of Miami Beach at a time when its future was far from certain. She did not simply witness that transformation \u2014 she drove it. She put things on the map that had no name yet, and she left her mark on every corner of it,\u201d Sawitz said.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Jo Ann Bass, matriarch of Miami Beach landmark Joe\u2019s Stone Crab, dies at 94<\/a><\/p>\n

Survivors and services<\/p>\n

Pommier\u2019s survivors include her husband, Peter Diel; her son, David Diel; daughter Jacqueline Pommier Diel, who assumes ownership of Michele Pommier Models at 5255 Collins Ave.; sisters Monica Pommier Kravitt and Denise Pommier Johnson; and grandchildren Love and Henri.<\/p>\n

The family suggests that donations be made in Pommier\u2019s memory to the American Cancer Society<\/a>, SoBe Cats Spay & Neuter<\/a> and the Miami Beach Community Cat Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Family services were private.<\/p>\n

\"Michele Michele Pommier pioneered the transformation of Miami Beach into a modeling mecca with her namesake agency and was an original Virginia Slims model in the 1970s\u2019 \u201cYou\u2019ve Come a Long Way, Baby\u201d ad campaign. Courtesy Pommier family <\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Howard Cohen<\/a><\/p>\n

Miami Herald<\/p>\n

Miami Herald consumer trends reporter Howard Cohen, a 2017 Media Excellence Awards winner, has covered pop music, theater, health and fitness, obituaries, municipal government, breaking news and general assignment. He started his career in the Features department at the Miami Herald in 1991. Cohen is an adjunct professor at the University of Miami School of Communication.
\n Support my work with a digital subscription<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this file photo from Oct. 29, 2003, Miami Beach modeling agency founder Michele Pommier poses by a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-239680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}