Brigitte Macron Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Brigitte Macron
Macron in 2024

Spouse of the President of France
Current
Assumed role 14 May 2017
President	Emmanuel Macron
Preceded by	Valérie Trierweiler (2014)

Personal details
Born	Brigitte Marie-Claude Trogneux (1953-04-13) 13 April 1953 (age 72) Amiens, France
Spouses	André-Louis Auzière (m. 1974; div. 2006) Emmanuel Macron (m. 2007)
Children	3, including Laurence Auzière-Jourdan
Occupation	Teacher (formerly)

Brigitte Marie-Claude Macron (French: [bʁiʒit maʁi klod makʁɔ̃]; née Trogneux [tʁɔɲø], previously Auzière [ozjɛːʁ]; born 13 April 1953) is a French former teacher known for being the wife of Emmanuel Macron, the current president of France and co-prince of Andorra.

Early life
Career
Politics
Personal life
Honours
- Foreign honours
See also

Early life

Brigitte Macron was born Brigitte Marie-Claude Trogneux in Amiens, France. She is the youngest of six children of Simone (née Pujol; 1910–1998) and Jean Trogneux (1909–1994), the owners of the five-generation Chocolaterie Trogneux, founded in 1872 in Amiens. The company, now known as Jean Trogneux, is run by her nephew, Jean-Alexandre Trogneux.

Career

Macron, at the time Brigitte Auzière, taught literature at the Collège Lucie-Berger in Strasbourg in the 1980s. By the 1990s, she was teaching French and Latin at Lycée la Providence, a Jesuit high school in Amiens. From 2007 to 2015, she taught at Lycée Saint-Louis de Gonzague, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, one of the most prestigious French private schools. At that institution, she was the French teacher of Frédéric and Jean Arnault, sons of French luxury business tycoon Bernard Arnault.

It was at the after-school drama club of Lycée la Providence where she and Emmanuel Macron first met. She was in charge of the after-school theater club he attended when he was 15 alongside her own daughter Laurence who was in his class. Their relationship has attracted controversy, as she is his senior by close to 25 years, and he was a minor; Macron has described it as "a love often clandestine, often hidden, misunderstood by many before imposing itself".

Politics

French president Emmanuel Macron kisses Brigitte's hand during a state visit at the White House with U.S. president Donald Trump and Melania Trump in April 2018.

In 1989, Brigitte Macron (then Auzière) unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the city council of Truchtersheim. It was the only time she ran for office.

In 2017, Brigitte Macron played an active role in her husband's presidential campaign; a top adviser was quoted as saying that "her presence is essential for him". During his campaign, Emmanuel Macron stated that upon his winning of the French presidency, his wife would "have the role that she always had, she will not be hidden".

He proposed creating an official "first lady" (première dame) title (as the spouse of the French president currently holds no official title) coming with their own staff, office and a personally allocated budget for their activities. Following Macron's election as president and his previously outspoken stance against nepotism, a petition against his proposal gathered more than 275,000 signatures, and the French government announced that Brigitte Macron would not hold the official title of "first lady" and would not be allocated an official budget. In an interview with French magazine Elle, she stated that a soon-to-be published transparency charter would clarify her "role and accompanying resources", including the composition and size of her staff. This charter was published the following Friday.

Personal life

On 22 June 1974, Brigitte married banker André-Louis Auzière (1951–2019), with whom she had three children (Sébastien, born 1975; Laurence, born 1977; and Tiphaine, born 1984). They resided in Truchtersheim until 1991, when they moved to Amiens. In 1993, at the age of 39, she met the 15-year-old Emmanuel Macron in La Providence High School, where she was a teacher and he was a student and a classmate of her daughter. Brigitte divorced Auzière in January 2006 and married Macron on 20 October 2007.