feather hair extensions seem to be part of the explanation
It embraces President Sarkozy partly because the family saga has been acted feather hair extensionsout in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France’s wealthiest town, outside the western boundary of the city of Paris. Liliane Bettencourt and her daughter, Francoise, live on opposite sides of one of the richest streets in the richest quarter of France’s richest commune. Until 2007, when he became President of the Republic, the mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine was Nicolas Sarkozy.
L’Oréal was founded in 1909 by Liliane’s father, Eugene Schueller. In 1907, he invented the world’s first successful hair dye. Liliane, his only child, was involved in the company from young womanhood, including, at one time, working on the factory floor. In 1950, she married a right-wing, haut-bourgeois, high-Catholic, journalist and politician, André Bettencourt. Their only daughter Francoise was born three years later.
Liliane has always been an enthusiastic socialite. Francoise became a shy, quiet girl, and brilliant pianist.
In 1984 she married– against her parents’ initial wishes – Jean-Pierre Meyers from a wealthy, French Jewish banking family. Five years later, it emerged that both Eugene Schueller and André Bettencourt had worked for the extreme-right, virulently anti-Semitic Cagoule movement before the Second World War.
Some Bettencourt and L’Oréal insiders suggest that the rift between Francoise and her mother began at wholesale feather hair extensions that time. That may be too simple.
Ill-feeling between the L’Oréal matriarch and her Jewish son-in-law does seem to be part of the explanation of the family quarrel. However, Francoise remained very close to her father until his death. She appears never to have been very close to her mother. During the 1990s, L’Oréal, under the leadership of the Cheshire-born Lindsay Owen-Jones, became the world’s largest cosmetics company and one of the most successful and valuable multinational companies in Europe. The Bettencourt fortune increased tenfold.
Soon after her father’s death in 2007, Francoise began to complain about her mother’s close friendship with a playboy writer and photographer, Francois-Marie Banier. The relationship was never sexual. Mr Banier is gay. His original friendship was with Liliane’s husband, André.
Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers protested that Mr Banier had turned her mother against her. She also objected to the extravagant presents which her octogenarian mother had showered on the anti-establishment, left-wing, professedly money-hating photographer. Ms Bettencourt gifts to her friend were estimated to be worth over €1bn, including art-works, cash, life insurance policies and an island in the Indian Ocean.
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