Carla Bruni-Sarkozy‏

Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi was born in Turin, Italy, and is heiress
to the fortune created by the Italian tire manufacturing company CEAT,
founded in the 1920s by her grandfather Virginio Bruni Tedeschi . . . later
sold to Pirelli.
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 and signed with City Models.
Paul Marciano, president and creative director of Guess? Inc., came
across her picture among composite cards of aspiring models and chose
her to model with Estelle Lefébure in campaigns for Guess? jeans. Bruni
subsequently worked for designers and fashion houses such as Christian
Dior, Givenchy, Paco Rabanne, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Karl
Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Yves Saint-Laurent, Shiatzy Chen, Chanel
and Versace.
By the 1990s, Bruni was among the 20 highest-paid fashion models,
earning $7.5 million a year. While modeling, Bruni dated Eric Clapton,
then Mick Jagger. In 1997, Bruni quit the world of fashion to devote
herself to music.
In November 2007 she met the recently divorced French president
Nicolas Sarkozy at a dinner party. After a brief romance they married
in February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris.