PARIS: She has been in her husband’s life since he was 15 — first as a teacher, then lover and now as his first lady.
And she will be at Emmanuel Macron’s side when the 39-year-old pro-EU centrist takes office as modern France’s youngest ever president, after winning Sunday’s decisive run-off vote.
Elegant and svelte, 64-year-old Brigitte is her husband’s closest collaborator, whom he has pledged to give an official role at the presidential palace.
“Every night we debrief together and we repeat what we have heard about each other,” she told Paris Match magazine last year. “I have to pay attention to everything, do the maximum to protect him.”
Brigitte has been on the cover of nearly a dozen magazines and at her husband’s side for packed-to-capacity rallies, while the world has been fascinated by the couple’s unorthodox romance.
But before all that she was another man’s wife and mother of three who taught French, Latin and drama. She was on course for a comfortable, if somewhat conventional life.
Brigitte Trogneux was born on April 13, 1953, in Amiens in northern France, which is also Emmanuel Macron’s hometown, into a prosperous family that runs a well-known pastry and chocolate business.
Then in the early 1990s she was astounded by a young man acting in a production of Milan Kundera’s “Jacques and his Master.” It was Emmanuel.
She quickly agreed when he asked her to help him work on a script and thus they began to build a bond.
The teacher, then 39, was “totally captivated” by 15-year-old Emmanuel’s intelligence. The feeling was mutual and two years later he made a bold prediction.
“At the age of 17, Emmanuel said to me: ‘Whatever you do, I will marry you’,” she told Paris Match last April.
Emmanuel Macron went off to finish high school at an elite establishment in Paris, but he kept pursuing her and little by little she was won over.
Brigitte left her husband Andre Louis Auziere, a banker, in 2006 and married Macron a year later. She moved to Paris where he continued his studies and she worked as a teacher.
“When I make up my mind about something, I do it,” she said in a documentary about Emmanuel.
She is described as warm and down-to-earth by those who know her, who also stress her charm and positive nature.
One of them, Gregoire Campion, met her on a beach in the northern resort town of Le Touquet over 40 years ago. Their beach huts were next to each other and he remembers the young Brigitte “wasn’t a party animal” but was “very educated.”
Le Touquet has remained a part of her life and the now grandmother of seven has spent many weekends there with her family. She was at Emmanuel’s side when he cast his ballot there on Sunday.
It is a place to gather with her son and two daughters from her first marriage — who have grown up to be an engineer, a cardiologist and a lawyer.
Yet the life with her politician husband and the massive commitment of the campaign remains a major focus.
“I am lucky to share this with Emmanuel, even if when it comes to politics I haven’t had much choice,” she has said, also voicing the desire to help disadvantaged young people as first lady.
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Brigitte: from teacher to France’s new first lady
Brigitte: from teacher to France’s new first lady
From the sky, NGO searches for west African migrant boats in distress
Every hour is crucial when searching for distressed west African migrant boats in the Atlantic, where the long route and harsh weather easily spell disaster, a nonprofit that conducts aerial surveillance told AFP during a recent mission.
AFP rode along with the organisation Humanitarian Pilots Initiative (HPI) as it raced to locate several missing pirogues -- long, rickety canoes -- that had left The Gambia but never showed up at their final destination.
The mission: search an area larger than Switzerland, from hundreds of metres (yards) in the air, with an aim of rendering aid before it is too late.
"People could be dead or dying from dehydration, heat stroke or any other conditions," pilot Omar El Manfalouty told AFP.
Migrants departing from west Africa and travelling up the Atlantic are usually trying to reach Europe via the Canary Islands off northwest Africa.
The Spanish archipelago is the jumping off point for their continued journey onward to the European continent.
With many recent departures taking place from further south in The Gambia and Guinea, migrants are now spending longer at sea and facing more hardships.
More than 3,000 migrants died in 2025 while attempting to reach Spain clandestinely, according to the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras.
While HPI has operated since 2016 in the central Mediterranean, it is a relative newcomer to the Atlantic.
In the Mediterranean, it has already helped spot more than 1,000 boats, alerting international NGO rescue ships which then go and help.
AFP flew with HPI on its third mission in nine months in the Atlantic, riding for several days in the NGO's Beechcraft Baron 58 nicknamed "Seabird".
- 'Vast area' -
"The Atlantic Ocean is huge. It's a vast area and it's impossible to cover it in its entirety," said El Manfalouty.
"We brought our longest-range aircraft here and we're focusing on the area which other actors cannot reach, approximately between 300 and 500 nautical miles from the Canaries," he said.
Once HPI spots a vessel, it sends an alert for emergency response to nearby merchant ships so that they can provide immediate support. From there, Spain's maritime safety and rescue authority, Salvamento Maritimo, takes over.
"Having an aircraft in the area to support from the air with 10 times the speed (of boats) makes a lot of sense," said Samira, the mission's tactical coordinator who asked not to use her last name due to threats the NGO receives in several European countries.
One morning in January the crew received an alert from another NGO that a boat which had departed The Gambia carrying 103 people, including nine women and three children, was missing. HPI quickly mobilised.
The trip from The Gambia to the Canaries is 1,000 nautical miles, meaning there is a vast region where the boat might be, Samira said. On her tablet, she plotted out several routes.
- Eyes glued -
Once the plane reached the patrol zone, the aircraft descended below cloud cover and followed straight, parallel trajectories. Three crew members kept their eyes glued to the windows for the pirogue.
While in the air they received word of another vessel: a second boat, which left The Gambia seven days earlier with 137 people on board.
With the strong winds and swell, "the boats may have drifted", Samira said.
Boats have previously drifted so far as to reach the Caribbean or South America without any survivors.
After three consecutive days of flying, the crew had covered nearly 3,800 nautical miles, but there was still no trace of the two boats.
As of publication, neither of the vessels had reached the Canaries.
Near a migrant reception centre in Las Palmas, a major city in the Canary Islands, Ousmane Ly, a recently arrived 25-year-old Senegalese man, gazed at the beach. Other migrants, also from Senegal, were taking advantage of the sunny day to take photos.
The joy of having made it outweighed the difficulty some were having walking after days crammed into a pirogue.
Their hands, arms and legs bore wounds caused by the salt water.
He recounted how once they boarded the pirogue, he and the other passengers were covered with a tarpaulin: "I closed my eyes and thought of my mother," he said.
The tarpaulin -- used to protect them from the sun during the day and cold at night -- was removed only 10 days later, when the boat was rescued by Salvamento Maritimo.
There were 108 people on board, two of whom were found dead during the rescue.
AFP rode along with the organisation Humanitarian Pilots Initiative (HPI) as it raced to locate several missing pirogues -- long, rickety canoes -- that had left The Gambia but never showed up at their final destination.
The mission: search an area larger than Switzerland, from hundreds of metres (yards) in the air, with an aim of rendering aid before it is too late.
"People could be dead or dying from dehydration, heat stroke or any other conditions," pilot Omar El Manfalouty told AFP.
Migrants departing from west Africa and travelling up the Atlantic are usually trying to reach Europe via the Canary Islands off northwest Africa.
The Spanish archipelago is the jumping off point for their continued journey onward to the European continent.
With many recent departures taking place from further south in The Gambia and Guinea, migrants are now spending longer at sea and facing more hardships.
More than 3,000 migrants died in 2025 while attempting to reach Spain clandestinely, according to the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras.
While HPI has operated since 2016 in the central Mediterranean, it is a relative newcomer to the Atlantic.
In the Mediterranean, it has already helped spot more than 1,000 boats, alerting international NGO rescue ships which then go and help.
AFP flew with HPI on its third mission in nine months in the Atlantic, riding for several days in the NGO's Beechcraft Baron 58 nicknamed "Seabird".
- 'Vast area' -
"The Atlantic Ocean is huge. It's a vast area and it's impossible to cover it in its entirety," said El Manfalouty.
"We brought our longest-range aircraft here and we're focusing on the area which other actors cannot reach, approximately between 300 and 500 nautical miles from the Canaries," he said.
Once HPI spots a vessel, it sends an alert for emergency response to nearby merchant ships so that they can provide immediate support. From there, Spain's maritime safety and rescue authority, Salvamento Maritimo, takes over.
"Having an aircraft in the area to support from the air with 10 times the speed (of boats) makes a lot of sense," said Samira, the mission's tactical coordinator who asked not to use her last name due to threats the NGO receives in several European countries.
One morning in January the crew received an alert from another NGO that a boat which had departed The Gambia carrying 103 people, including nine women and three children, was missing. HPI quickly mobilised.
The trip from The Gambia to the Canaries is 1,000 nautical miles, meaning there is a vast region where the boat might be, Samira said. On her tablet, she plotted out several routes.
- Eyes glued -
Once the plane reached the patrol zone, the aircraft descended below cloud cover and followed straight, parallel trajectories. Three crew members kept their eyes glued to the windows for the pirogue.
While in the air they received word of another vessel: a second boat, which left The Gambia seven days earlier with 137 people on board.
With the strong winds and swell, "the boats may have drifted", Samira said.
Boats have previously drifted so far as to reach the Caribbean or South America without any survivors.
After three consecutive days of flying, the crew had covered nearly 3,800 nautical miles, but there was still no trace of the two boats.
As of publication, neither of the vessels had reached the Canaries.
Near a migrant reception centre in Las Palmas, a major city in the Canary Islands, Ousmane Ly, a recently arrived 25-year-old Senegalese man, gazed at the beach. Other migrants, also from Senegal, were taking advantage of the sunny day to take photos.
The joy of having made it outweighed the difficulty some were having walking after days crammed into a pirogue.
Their hands, arms and legs bore wounds caused by the salt water.
He recounted how once they boarded the pirogue, he and the other passengers were covered with a tarpaulin: "I closed my eyes and thought of my mother," he said.
The tarpaulin -- used to protect them from the sun during the day and cold at night -- was removed only 10 days later, when the boat was rescued by Salvamento Maritimo.
There were 108 people on board, two of whom were found dead during the rescue.
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