An NPR Best Book of 2017 Heiress to the nearly forty-billion-dollar L Oréal fortune Liliane
Bettencourt was the world s richest woman and the fourteenth wealthiest person. But her gilded
life took a dark yet fascinating turn in the past decade. At ninety-four she was embroiled in
what has been called the Bettencourt Affair a scandal that dominated the headlines in France.
Why? It s a tangled web of hidden secrets divided loyalties frayed relationships and
fractured families set in the most romantic city and involving the most glamorous industry in
the world. The Bettencourt Affair started as a family drama but quickly became a massive
scandal uncovering L Oréal s shadowy corporate history and buried World War II secrets. From
the Right Bank mansions to the Left Bank artist havens and from the Bettencourts servant
quarters to the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy all of Paris was shaken by the blockbuster
case the shocking reversals and the surprising final victim. It all began when Liliane met
François-Marie Banier an artist and photographer who was in his youth the toast of Paris and
a protégé of Salvador Dalí. Over the next two decades Banier was given hundreds of millions of
dollars in gifts cash and insurance policies by Liliane. What exactly was their
relationship? It wasn t clear least of all to Liliane s daughter and only child Françoise
who became suspicious of Banier s motives and filed a lawsuit against him. But Banier has a far
different story to tell... The Bettencourt Affair is part courtroom drama part
upstairs-downstairs tale and part characterdriven story of a complex fascinating family and
the intruder who nearly tore it apart.
