Simone Veil, DBE (French pronunciation: [simɔn vɛj]; born 13 July 1927) is a French lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Health under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, President of the European Parliament and member of the Constitutional Council of France.

A survivor from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where she lost part of her family, she is the Honorary President of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.

She was elected to the Académie française in November 2008.

Veil was born Simone Annie Liline Jacob, the daughter of a Jewish architect in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. In March 1944, Veil's family was deported, Simone, her mother and one sister to Auschwitz-Birkenau then Bergen-Belsen where her mother died shortly before the camp's 15 April 1945 liberation. Veil's father and brother also died; they are last known to have been sent on a transport to Lithuania. Veil's other sister who had been arrested as a member of the Resistance survived her imprisonment in Ravensbrück. Veil returned to speak at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2005 for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camps.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, Italian pronunciation: [ˈkarla dʒilˈbɛrta ˈbruːni teˈdeski]; 23 December 1967) is an Italian-French songwriter, singer, actress, and former model. She has been married to Nicolas Sarkozy, the former President of the French Republic, since February 2008.

Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi was born in Turin, Italy, and is heiress to the fortune created by the Italian tyre manufacturing company CEAT, founded in the 1920s by her grandfather Virginio Bruni Tedeschi. The company was sold in the 1970s to Pirelli (the brand lives on via its former subsidiary in India, founded in 1958). The family moved to France in 1975, reportedly to escape the threat of kidnapping by the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary group active in Italy in the 1970s. Bruni grew up in France from age seven and attended boarding school in Switzerland. She went to Paris to study art and architecture, but left school at 19 to become a model.

She is legally the daughter of Italian concert pianist Marisa Borini and industrialist and classical composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi. However, in 2008 Bruni told Vanity Fair that her biological father is Italian-born, Brazilian grocery magnate Maurizio Remmert. At that time, Remmert was a 19-year old classical guitarist, and his affair with Borini lasted six years. Her sister is actress and movie director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. She had a brother, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi (1959–4 July 2006), who died from complications of HIV/AIDS.

Mélissa Theuriau (French pronunciation: [melisa tœʁjo]; born 18 July 1978 in Échirolles, Isère) is a French journalist and news anchor for M6. She studied Journalism and became a newscaster on TV. She became an internet phenomenon when a compilation of her reading news was uploaded and newspapers voted her the world's most beautiful news reporter. She currently is co-editor in chief and anchor of Zone interdite on French TV.

Theuriau obtained a DUT in News-Communication from the Technical University (Institut universitaire de technologie, or IUT) Pierre Mendès-France in Grenoble, and later a Master's degree in Audiovisual Journalism from the Institute of Communication and Media (ICM) at Échirolles. Theuriau was a reporter at Match TV in 2002. Since 2003, she has been a reporter and anchor for La Chaîne Info, where she became better known to the French general public. She made her breakthrough as a newscaster and travel show host for LCI, the news channel and for TF1. Her programs were LCI Matin (LCI Morning), the 6:40 news on LCI and TF1 from Monday to Thursday and the Voyages travel show on Wednesdays at 13:55 on LCI. In May 2006, she surprised the management of TF1 by refusing the offer to be the anchorwoman of the weekend evening news of TF1, as a summer replacement for sitting anchorwoman Claire Chazal.