They formed one of the most publicized couples in political life. From 1996 to 2007, Cécilia Attias and Nicolas Sarkozy lived an idyll which had started in comical circumstances. Then mayor of Neuilly in 1984, Nicolas Sarkozy presided over the union of the animator Jacques Martin and his companion … a certain Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, better known now under the name of Cécilia Attias.

In the Inseparable podcast, journalist Catherine Nay then claimed that Nicolas Sarkozy would have fallen in love with the latter. “I would like to give you a gift that I cannot give you: it is my mayor’s scarf. I would like to give it to you and I cannot”, he would have stated. A subtle double meaning according to the journalist, actually wanting to say: “I would like to be married to your wife”. More than ten years after her marriage to Jacques Martin, Cécilia Attias will marry Nicolas Sarkozy on October 23, 1996 in Neuilly. From their union come into the world a boy named Louis Sarkozy. Since their divorce in 2007, the activist has rebuilt her life far from Paris.

Since her separation from Nicolas Sarkozy, Cécilia Attias has flown to the United States where she marries the advertiser Richard Attis. In October 2008, she created her Cécilia-Attias foundation for women in order to improve the living conditions of women “around the world by providing a strategic, financial, networking and media platform”, specifies the latter’s website.

“This foundation has existed for fifteen years. Its origin is incredible. A few years ago, a group of Iranian women contacted me saying that to change things in Iran, we had to act from the inside”, had – she told Forbes in October 2022 and continued: “These women needed the help of a representative. To accompany them, I decided to create a foundation in New York. Since then, we have been helping foundations and associations that need us”.