PARIS — Eliane Heilbronn, the matriarch of the family that owns Chanel, has died at the age of 99.
Her death was confirmed by Chanel in a statement on Sunday.
“Chanel is deeply saddened to confirm the passing of Madame Eliane Heilbronn. The funeral will be held privately,” it said.
Heilbronn is best known for her career in law, which saw her draft the contract of Karl Lagerfeld when he was hired as creative director of Chanel in 1982.
Born in 1925 to Denise and Louis-Raymond Fischer, an architect who later took part in the French Resistance, Eliane Fischer grew up in Paris. Her parents divorced in 1939.
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When Germany invaded France the following year, she and her younger brother Robert first found refuge in the South of France with their mother, who had remarried, before heading to Mexico City, where their new stepfather Marcel Bloch, a businessmann, had grown up and still had family ties.
Once World War II was over, Eliane Fischer, as she was then known, returned to France to pursue a university education with an eye toward law.
In 1947, she married Jacques Wertheimer, the son of Bourjois and Chanel co-owner Pierre Wertheimer. The couple welcomed sons Alain in 1948 and Gérard in 1951.
Following her 1952 divorce, she married Didier Heilbronn, a lawyer. The couple had a son, Charles Heilbronn, who is now the head of the family office Mousse Partners. The family moved to New York City where her husband joined the Louis-Dreyfus merchant firm.
Then in her 30s, Eliane Heilbronn enrolled in the New York Law School and graduated in 1958 with a master of law. After returning to Paris, she joined the newly minted law firm of Samuel Pisar in 1962.
When her former husband Jacques Wertheimer was sidelined from Chanel in 1974, leaving her eldest son Alain in charge at the age of just 25, Heilbronn became one of his key advisers. The same year, she was sworn in as a member of the Paris bar.
The lawyer would subsequently cofound Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn, now known as Dentons, which became Chanel’s long-term private law firm. Over the decades, she drafted the contract of the French company’s top executives.
An elegant yet discreet figure, she was active well into her later years, going to her office in the tony 8th arrondissement until the COVID-19 pandemic, according to French media. On the law firm’s website, she still held the position of senior counsel, with a specialty in contract law as well as distribution and intellectual property law.
Heilbronn is survived by her three sons and eight grandchildren.
– With contributions from Joelle Diderich
