Lucienne Heurtelou


Lucienne Heurtelou was a Haitian diplomat, women's rights advocate, author, former First Lady of Haiti and the wife of Haitian President Dumarsais Estimé. She was honorary President of the Ligue Féminine d'Action sociale, an influential Haitian feminist organization created in 1934, during its First Congress of Haitian Women. The Congress attracted delegates of 44 Haitian women's organizations and 32 delegates of 17 international women's organizations and relaunched the Haitian women's movement for equal rights. In October 1948, she inaugurated an orphanage in Truittier, near Carrefour which was never completed. She is the first Haitian First Lady to have written her memoirs, a book in which she delves into the undoing of her husband's presidency by his political enemies.
She became Haiti's first female ambassador after her husband's death in 1953.
She is the mother of former Haitian government official Jean-Robert Estimé.
She died on May 19, 2006 at age 85, gunned down in the robbery of the jewelry store of the Daccaret family on Dufort street in Port-au-Prince.