Édith Piaf

Edith Piaf (1915-1963) was a French singer and one of her country’s best-known cultural icons. She is probably France’s greatest ever singer and sang classics such as ‘La vie en rose’. She was so popular that 100,000 people attended her funeral in Paris and traffic came to a standstill. There is a museum in Paris dedicated to her memory.

She was born Edith Gassion in a poor suburb of Paris. Piaf’s parents abandoned her when she was a child and she lived with her grandmother. When she was 14, she teamed up with her acrobat father. She toured France with him and sang in public for the first time. Aged 16, she went her own way and became a street singer.