Simone Gbagbo

Simone Gbagbo
Simone Gbagbo in 2006
First Lady of Ivory Coast
In role October 26, 2000 – April 11, 2011
Preceded by	Rose Doudou Guéï
Succeeded by	Dominique Folloroux-Ouattara
Personal details
Born	(1949-06-20) June 20, 1949 (age 67) Moossou, French West Africa
Political party	Ivorian Popular Front
Spouse(s)	Laurent Gbagbo
Children	5
Religion	Evangelical Christian

Simone Ehivet Gbagbo (born 20 June 1949) is an Ivorian politician. She is the President of the Parliamentary Group of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) and is a Vice-President of the FPI. As the wife of Laurent Gbagbo, the President of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 to 2011, she was also First Lady of Ivory Coast prior to their arrest by pro-Ouattara forces.

Born in 1949 in the Moossou neighborhood, her parents are Jean Ehivet, a local police officer, and Marie Djaha. Simone Gbagbo trained as a historian and earned a third cycle doctorate in oral literature. She worked in applied linguistics, as a Marxist labor union leader, and is an Evangelical Christian in a church with close ties to the United States. She is the mother of five daughters, the last two with her current husband Laurent Gbagbo. She has been nicknamed in the Ivorian press the Hillary Clinton des tropiques.

Ehivet Gbagbo participated in the teachers' strike movement of 1982, and helped found, with her future husband, the clandestine political group which became the FPI. An active trades union militant in the 1970s, she was imprisoned a number of times during the struggle for multiparty elections.

Following the introduction of multiparty elections, Gbagbo and her husband were arrested for allegedly inciting violence in February 1992 and spent six months in prison. In 1996, she became an FPI Deputy from Abobo (part of Abidjan) in the National Assembly; she and her husband were also seriously injured in a car accident around that time.

Re-elected to the National Assembly as an FPI Deputy from Abobo in the December 2000 parliamentary election, Gbagbo is also President of the FPI Parliamentary Group. At the FPI's Third Extraordinary Congress, held from 20 to 22 July 2001, she was elected as the Second Vice-President of the FPI.