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From the moment her harmonious figure, her tousled blonde hair and her carefree appearance appeared on screen, Brigitte became synonymous with indomitable beauty, freedom and provocation, giving birth to the explosive phenomenon Bardot, who transcended fiction and shaped the imagination of three generations (a world-famous star, who in one year brought in more foreign currency for France than the Renault brand). Before her last breath, she spent three weeks hospitalized in Toulon, in the south-east of the country, for surgery linked to a “serious illness”.

Master of her life until the end, the diva, who had refused cosmetic surgery, makeup or dyeing her gray hair, died out of sight and surrounded by her animals. But despite her wish to be buried in her garden, Bardot will be buried in the maritime cemetery of Saint-Tropez, where her parents are buried.

She was born in Paris on September 28, 1934, under the name Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot, into a bourgeois family (her father owned a chemical factory). From a very young age, she studied classical dance, a discipline for which she showed a precocious talent, and before the age of 15, when the rebellious traits that would make her famous began to manifest themselves, she was already a model for magazines for teenagers: she was a young woman with a mischievous smile who appeared on the cover of Elle and drove film talent scouts crazy, including Roger Vadim, assistant director who was her first husband and who also transformed her into a star.

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He made his cinema debut at the age of 17 in *Le Trou Normand*, but his worldwide recognition came five years later with *And God Created Woman*, directed by Roger Vadim. This film scandalized and fascinated many others, featuring a woman in control of her desires, who defied the moral conventions of the time, living her sexuality without taboos. This is how an erotic icon of comparable magnitude to that of Marilyn Monroe was born. In the following years, Brigitte worked with directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Christian Jaque, and by the late 1950s she became the biggest star in European cinema and the only one to rival Hollywood stars in fame without ever having set foot in the United States. However, her public image as Brigitte Bose-Brentz was so powerful that her artistic performance was always unfairly overshadowed.

Her marriage to Roger Vadim took place on December 21, 1952, at the altar of the Notre-Dame de Grâce church in Passy, ​​after two years of struggle against the opposition of her parents. With him, Brigitte discovers cinema, love and sexuality, and finally frees herself from the rigid education she had received at home. But she soon fell in love with her co-star, Jean-Louis Trintignant, who was also married, and although their relationship was brief, they lived together for a time. In 1959, she met Jacques Charrier, who would become her second husband and father of her only son, Nicolas, born in 1960. As she herself revealed, she was terrified of motherhood. That same year, during the filming of *La Vérité*, she divorced Charrier, who remained with Nicolas. A large part of the public and the French press never forgave him for having abandoned his son, even if he forgave him: over time, BB and Nicolas reconciled.

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In 1966, she married for the third time. This time the wedding took place in Las Vegas and the groom was German playboy Gunter Sachs, millionaire heir to the Opel empire, who won her heart by dropping thousands of rose petals from a helicopter above the La Madrague garden. They barely see each other, both are unfaithful and, as expected, the marriage is short-lived: six years later, Brigitte marries her last husband, Bernard d’Ormale, one of the advisors of the politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

At the end of the 1960s, tired of fame, Brigitte Bardot decided to retire from cinema at just 37 years old. From that moment on, she devoted herself entirely to animal rights and fulfilled this commitment with passion and discipline (also becoming a vegetarian). In 1986, she created the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, financed by the sale of her personal effects and jewelry, and until her death, her activism on behalf of animals kept her in the spotlight.