Leïla Ben Ali

Leïla Ben Ali ليلى بن علي
Leila Ben Ali presides over a meeting of the Arab Women Organization, November 2010
First Lady of Tunisia
In office 26 March 1992 – 14 January 2011
President	Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali
Preceded by	Naïma Kefi
Succeeded by	Beatrix Marzouki
Personal details
Born	(1956-10-24) 24 October 1956 (age 60) Tunis, Tunisia
Religion	Islam

Leïla Ben Ali (Arabic: ليلى بن علي‎‎, née Trabelssi; born 24 October 1956) is the wife of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. She married Ben Ali in 1992.

Leïla Ben Ali was the president of the Arab Women Organization and chair of the Basma Association, a charitable organization working to secure employment for the disabled. In July 2010, Mrs. Ben Ali founded SAIDA to improve care for cancer patients in Tunisia. During the Tunisian revolution in 2010–11, she fled with her husband and three children into exile in Saudi Arabia. During her time as First Lady of Tunisia, she is believed to have enriched herself and her family through gross corruption and embezzlement of state money to finance a lavish lifestyle, factors which contributed to the protests against the regime of Ben Ali at the end of 2010. She is currently wanted by Interpol on behest of the Tunisian judiciary for high treason and money laundering.

Leïla Ben Ali is the daughter of Mohamed and Saïda Trabelsi. She has ten brothers and sisters. A "hard hitting" 2009 book by French journalists Nicholas Beau and Catherine Graciet traced her rise from the daughter of a dried fruit seller to First Lady. Prior to her 1992 marriage to Ben Ali, she was a hairdresser with little formal education, partying hard in Paris. She was married for three years to Khelil Maaouia. She then had an affair with industrial magnate, Farid Mokhtar, a friend of the Prime Minister who introduced her to the highest levels of Tunisian society.

After her romantic relationship and subsequent marriage to Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, she and her family rose to prominent positions in Tunisian business and became noted for their greed, power and ruthlessness. Leila Ben Ali and most of her relatives fled Tunisia to Saudi Arabia, France, Canada and Qatar on 14 January 2011, when President Ben Ali was ousted.