Brigitte Macron


Brigitte Marie-Claude Macron is a French schoolteacher who is the wife and former teacher of Emmanuel Macron, current President of the French Republic. In 2015, to help support her husband in his political career, she ended her career as a teacher of literature at a prestigious private high school, Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague, in Paris.

Early life

Brigitte Macron was born Brigitte Marie-Claude Trogneux in Amiens, France. She was the youngest of six children of Simone and Jean Trogneux, 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

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.
It was at that high school that she and Emmanuel Macron first met. He attended her literature classes, and she was in charge of the theatre class that he attended. Their romance was not typical, as she was his senior by almost a quarter of a century, and Macron has described it as "a love often clandestine, often hidden, misunderstood by many before imposing itself".

Politics

In 1989, Brigitte Macron 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 with , she will not be hidden".
He proposed to create an official “First Lady” title coming with their own staff, office and a personally allocated budget for their activities. Following Macron's election as President, and a petition against his proposal that gathered more than 275,000 signatures, 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.

Personal life

On 22 June 1974 she married banker André-Louis Auzière, with whom she had three children, Sébastien Auzière, an engineer, Dr. Laurence Auzière-Jourdan, a cardiologist, and Tiphaine Auzière, a lawyer. They resided in Truchtersheim until 1991, when they moved to Amiens. She, at the age of 40, met the 15-year-old Emmanuel Macron in La Providence High School in the year 1993, where she was a teacher and he was a student and a classmate of her daughter Laurence. She divorced Auzière in January 2006 and married Macron in October 2007.