![\"Bernadette](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/805e51ed-a535-4892-892a-c63612dba3d2_59cce098.jpg\" "\\"Bernadette")
Bernadette Chirac looks on as her husband, French President Jacques Chirac, speaks in Paris in December 2001. Photo: AFP<\/p>\nBernadette Chirac, the steel-willed former first lady of France who spent 12 years at the Elysee Palace from 1995 to 2007 beside President Jacques Chirac \u2013 weathering his notorious infidelities with dry humour while building her own political power base in rural France \u2013 has died. She was 93.<\/p>\n
President Emmanuel Macron confirmed her death on Saturday, saying he and his wife Brigitte had learned with \u201cgreat sadness\u201d of the passing of a woman who marked French history, and changed the lives of millions through her charity work.<\/p>\n
\u201cA great lady of the heart has departed,\u201d Macron said.<\/p>\n
For more than half a century, Chirac was the fixed point in her late husband\u2019s restless climb \u2013 through parliament, two terms as prime minister, 18 years as mayor of Paris and, in 1995, the presidency.<\/p>\n
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 womaniser, a subject she later addressed with unusual frankness.<\/p>\n
Bernadette Chirac looks on as her husband, French President Jacques Chirac, speaks in Paris in December 2001. Photo: AFP<\/p>\n
Swarmed by photographers in Correze in 1998 \u2013 after rumours that Jacques Chirac had been unreachable the night Princess Diana died because he was with an actress \u2013 she stepped from her car and deadpanned: \u201cCalm down. I\u2019m not Claudia Cardinale. Or Lollobrigida.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bernadette Chirac, the steel-willed former first lady of France who spent 12 years at the Elysee Palace from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[100573,100577,100572,45341,100575,100569,100571,7465,88679,100578,100576,9,24,100579,63,1163,100570,122,124,123,100574],"class_list":["post-258020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-bernadette-chirac","tag-brigitte-macron","tag-charles-de-gaulle","tag-conversation","tag-correze","tag-dominique-de-villepin","tag-elysee-palace","tag-france","tag-jacques-chirac","tag-jean-guitton","tag-laurence","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nicolas-sarkozy","tag-nyc","tag-paris","tag-patrick-de-carolis","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-sciences-po"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}