People from France

118 people remembered here.

• 
  Alain Delon

  1935 – 2024 · Actor

  French cinema icon; Le Samourai, Purple Noon, The Leopard.

  459 candles · 44 tributes
• 
  Édouard Balladur

  1929 – 2026 · Economist

  French prime minister from 1993 to 1995, the courteous technocrat of the second cohabitation.

  412 candles · 10 tributes
• 
  Marjane Satrapi

  1969 – 2026 · Film director

  330 candles · 12 tributes
• 
  Bernadette Chirac

  1933 – 2026 · Politician

  279 candles · 13 tributes
• 
  Coco Chanel

  1883 – 1971 · Fashion designer

  Fashion fades, only style remains the same.

  191 candles · 12 tributes
• 
  Marie Curie

  1867 – 1934 · Physicist and chemist

  Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.

  130 candles · 13 tributes
• 
  Leonardo da Vinci

  1452 – 1519 · Painter

  Learning never exhausts the mind.

  119 candles · 14 tributes
• 
  Philippe Bouvard

  1929 – 2026 · Journalist

  Father of Les Grosses Tetes. 60 years on RTL. Wit that never retired.

  95 candles · 5 tributes
• 
  Jean-François Leroy

  1956 – 2026 · Photojournalist

  He made Perpignan a beacon: go and see, never look away.

  90 candles · 4 tributes
• 
  Michel Paulin

  1933 – 2026 · Actor

  Narrator of Les Mystérieuses Cités d'or; French voice of Chinatown's Jake Gittes.

  87 candles · 4 tributes
• 
  Didier Decoin

  1945 – 2026 · Novelist

  Goncourt storyteller; Cotentin sea; high idea of language.

  87 candles · 9 tributes
• 
  Catherine Ringer

  1957 – 2026 · Singer-songwriter

  Voice of Les Rita Mitsouko who made French pop dance, then kept the repertoire alive alone.

  86 candles · 9 tributes
• 
  Yves Brunier

  1941 – 2026 · puppeteer

  The man inside Casimir, France's gentle orange dinosaur.

  70 candles · 7 tributes
• 
  Mireille Calle-Gruber

  1945 – 2026 · Literary critic

  Critic and professor who kept Claude Simon, Butor and the créatrices vividly alive.

  65 candles · 8 tributes
• 
  Francois Rosse

  1945 – 2026 · Composer

  Alsatian-born composer and pianist who treated improvisation as a way of thinking composition.

  64 candles · 8 tributes
• 
  Charles Josselin

  1938 – 2026 · Politician

  Breton socialist who renamed the Côtes-d'Armor and beat Big Oil.

  63 candles · 7 tributes
• 
  Yvette Roudy

  1929 – 2026 · Politician

  France's first women's rights minister. She made abortion reimbursable and wrote equality into working life.

  52 candles · 8 tributes
• 
  Jean-Pierre Clar

  1942 – 2026 · Rugby league lock/loose forward (later hooker)

  Villeneuve XIII legend; France RL World Cup finalist 1968; champion at XV and XIII.

  42 candles · 6 tributes
• 
  Michel Fano

  1929 – 2026 · Composer

  He taught cinema to listen as one composition.

  41 candles · 5 tributes
• 
  Husky Kihal

  1961 – 2026 · Actor (cinema

  Henri Fournier of Astrid et Raphaelle, who made the morgue human.

  37 candles · 9 tributes
• 
  Arnaud Denis

  1983 – 2026 · Actor

  French actor-director who built companies, won Molières, and spoke to the end for injured patients.

  10 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Marc de La Ménardière

  1982 – 2026 · Documentary filmmaker

  Filmmaker of En quête de sens who left corporate life to help others rethink how we live.

  10 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Thérèse Brenet

  1935 – 2026 · Composer and pedagogue

  Prix de Rome composer and long-serving Paris Conservatoire teacher.

  10 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Marcelle Benoit

  1921 – 2026 · Musicologist and music historian

  She gave the musicians of Versailles back their names.

  10 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Catherine Dasté

  1929 – 2026 · Actress

  Pioneer of French theatre for young audiences, who made plays from children's own words.

  10 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Anouk Deschamps

  † 2026 · Content creator

  Young creator who showed thousands that life does not stop with a cancer diagnosis.

  9 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Claude Cohen-Tannoudji

  1933 – 2026 · Physicist

  He taught light to tame atoms, and taught generations of physicists to think clearly.

  9 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Henri Maler

  1946 – 2026 · Philosophy teacher

  If another world is possible, other media are possible too.

  9 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Maurice de Germiny

  1939 – 2026 · Roman Catholic bishop

  Bishop of Blois who joined Chartist archive craft to pastoral reform.

  9 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Jean-Paul Desprat

  1947 – 2026 · Historian

  Historian-novelist of Henri IV, the Girondins and the Grand Siecle who kept faith with Aveyron.

  9 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Pierre Constant

  1933 – 2026 · Actor

  Actor, acrobat and opera director who kept walking the wire into his nineties.

  9 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Vincent Dieutre

  1960 – 2026 · Film director and screenwriter

  A filmmaker who turned his own life, loves and travels into cinema.

  9 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Kavinsky

  1975 – 2026 · DJ

  French house and synthwave artist whose Nightcall defined a neon decade.

  9 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Edgar Morin

  1921 – 2026 · Sociologist

  Resistance fighter, humanist and theorist of complex thought, who taught the world to link what others separate.

  9 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Victor Anicet

  1938 – 2026 · Martinican ceramist

  Potter of memory who gave Martinique's clay a voice and kept his studio open to all.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Antoine Spire

  1946 – 2026 · Journalist

  France Culture voice who gave the airwaves to great thinkers, to exiles and to the debate of ideas.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Paul Barril

  1946 – 2026 · Gendarmerie officer and security consultant

  A founder of the GIGN whose career ran through the secret history of the Mitterrand years.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Lee Kwan-Young

  1946 – 2026 · Taekwondo master

  The Korean master who brought taekwondo to France and taught it for more than fifty years.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Pierre-Yves Collombat

  1945 – 2026 · Philosophy teacher

  Philosopher, mayor and senator who spent his life defending France's rural communes.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Jean-Pierre Péroncel-Hugoz

  1940 – 2026 · Journalist and essayist

  Le Monde correspondent and essayist who chronicled the Arab world for half a century.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Jean-François Le Nail

  1945 – 2026 · Archiviste-paléographe

  Archivist and historian of the Hautes-Pyrénées and their place-names.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Malek Bennouioua

  1991 – 2026 · Former professional Counter-Strike player

  French Counter-Strike streamer and mentor whose tutorials guided a generation.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Marina Vlady

  1938 – 2026 · Actress

  Cannes Best Actress whose films and voice linked French cinema with Russian culture.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Philippe Huet

  1942 – 2026 · Journalist

  Le Havre journalist and Grand prix de littérature policière novelist of Norman noir.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Pierre Collin

  1956 – 2026 · Painter

  Painter and engraver elected to the Academie des beaux-arts in 2018.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  René Bianchi

  1934 – 2026 · Cyclist

  Olympic silver pursuiter who carried Champagne cycling pride from Melbourne to home.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Stanislas Hutin

  1930 – 2026 · Anti-torture witness

  French conscript whose Algeria diary helped expose torture.

  8 candles · 1 tributes
• 
  Jacqueline Feldman

  1936 – 2026 · French sociologist and author

  Physicist turned sociologist who helped spark the French women's liberation movement.

  8 candles · 1 tributes