Geneviève de Fontenay

French businesswoman, a chair of the boards of Miss France and Miss Europe until she and her son Xavier Poirot sold the "Miss France" name to the group Endemol. In 2010, Fontenay created a rival beauty pageant contest, Miss Nationale, in partnership with the Swiss entrepreneur Eric Cormier, and served as its president until her retirement in 2016.

Throughout her time as a public figure, Fontenay cultivated a reputation for her style of dress. From 1957 until her death, Fontenay continuously wore a brimmed hat in all of her public appearances, while her outfits were almost always made from a black and white colour palette. According to Fontenay, she had adopted this style at the advice of her long-term partner Louis Poirot, as he claimed that her head was too small for her body, and a hat would disguise that. The hat became Fontenay's trademark, and she became known as la Dame au Chapeau (The lady in the hat) by the French media.

Fontenay met Louis Poirot in 1954, who became Fontenay's long-term partner. Despite claiming to be a former French Resistance fighter and journalist, Poirot was a fraudster who had been convicted of fraud and forgery. After beginning their relationship, Poirot began to use the name Louis Poirot de Fontenay professionally, with Fontenay also adopting the de Fontenay surname. The family resided in Saint-Cloud and had two sons together: Ludovic (1954–1984) and Xavier (born 1961). Poirot died in 1981. Geneviève de Fontenay died in her sleep of cardiac arrest at 11 PM on 1 August 2023 at her Saint-Cloud home at age 90.