- published: 09 May 2016
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Simone Ehivet Gbagbo (born 20 June 1949) is an Ivorian politician. She is the President of the Parliamentary Group of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) and is a Vice-President of the FPI. As the wife of Laurent Gbagbo, the President of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 to 2011, she was also First Lady of Ivory Coast prior to their arrest by pro-Ouattara forces.
Born in 1949 in the Moossou neighborhood, her parents are Jean Ehivet, a local police officer, and Marie Djaha. Simone Gbagbo trained as a historian and earned a third cycle doctorate in oral literature. She worked in applied linguistics, as a Marxist labor union leader, and is an Evangelical Christian in a church with close ties to the United States. She is the mother of five daughters, the last two with her current husband Laurent Gbagbo. She has been nicknamed in the Ivorian press the Hillary Clinton des tropiques.
Ehivet Gbagbo participated in the teachers' strike movement of 1982, and helped found, with her future husband, the clandestine political group which became the FPI. An active trades union militant in the 1970s, she was imprisoned a number of times during the struggle for multiparty elections.