Miss Europe is a popular regional beauty pageant among female contestants from the nations of the European continent established in 1928 and re-established at the end of World War II by Roger Zeiler of the French Committee of Elegance and Claude Berr. Most contestants won their respective national contests for Miss Universe, Miss World, and Miss Earth and participated as supplemental training for their respective competitions. If the titleholders have not succeeded in winning their international titles, titleholders eventually compete for the Miss Europe crown, such as the case of France's Elodie Gossuin who placed in the Top 10 at Miss Universe 2001 yet won the Miss Europe title in the subsequent year. The license to the pageant passed on to Dutch production company Endemol in 2003.

The pageant was not held in 1939–1947 due to World War II.

The pageant was not held in 1975, 1977, 1979, 1983, 1986–87, 1989–90, 1998, 2000, 2004 and 2007–2011.

Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985), generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known as the lead in three feature films made in Europe, including two G. W. Pabst films: Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Prix de Beauté (Miss Europe) (1930). She starred in 17 silent films and, late in life, authored a memoir, Lulu in Hollywood.

Born in Cherryvale, Kansas, Louise Brooks was the daughter of Leonard Porter Brooks, a lawyer, who was usually too busy with his practice to discipline his children, and Myra Rude, an artistic mother who determined that any "squalling brats she produced could take care of themselves".

Rude was a talented pianist who played the latest Debussy and Ravel for her children, inspiring them with a love of books and music. None of this protected her nine-year old daughter Louise from sexual abuse at the hands of a neighborhood predator. This event had a major influence on Brooks' life and career, causing her to say in later years that she was incapable of real love, and that this man "must have had a great deal to do with forming my attitude toward sexual pleasure....For me, nice, soft, easy men were never enough – there had to be an element of domination". (When Brooks at last told her mother of the incident, many years later, her mother suggested that it must have been Louise's fault for "leading him on".)

Shermine Shahrivar (Persian: شرمینه شهریورتهرانی,; born 1982) is a German model and beauty pageant titleholder who won Miss Europe 2005.

She became Miss Germany in 2004 and then won the overall title of Miss Europe in 2005 while competing in France.

She was born to Iraniran parents. Her mother and brothers live in Germany.

The 174 cm beauty queen has a university degree in social sciences.

Shermine Shahrivar was selected to be the host of the Oberhausen, Germany Nowruz celebration, said to be the largest in the World, on March 19, 2005. She hosted Traumpartner TV in Germany from December 2004 to August 2005.

She is also currently the face of US clothier American Apparel and has been featured in several ad campaigns since 2008.

She is the first Iranian girl ever to be on the cover of a Playboy Magazine featured in Germany.

Shermine currently lives in New York where she studies Acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.

From March 2009 until June 2010 she dated a German actor Thomas Kretschmann. She also dated The Twilight Saga: Eclipse star Xavier Samuel in 2010.