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Jeanne-Claude was born in Casablanca, Morocco, where her French military father was stationed. Her mother, Précilda, was 17 when she married Jeanne-Claude's father, Major Léon Denat. Précilda and Léon Denat divorced shortly after Jeanne-Claude was born, and Précilda remarried three times. Jeanne-Claude earned a baccalauréat in Latin and philosophy in 1952 from the University of Tunis.[1]

During World War II, Jeanne-Claude lived with her father's family while her mother forged papers for Frenchmen during the French Resistance. In 1946, Précilda married the influential General Jacques de Guillebon. The family lived in Berne from 1948 to 1951, then in Tunisia from 1952 to 1957, when they returned to Paris.

She was described as "extroverted" and with natural organizational abilities. Her hair was dyed red, a color she claimed was selected by her husband[6] and she smoked cigarettes, and tried to quit many times until her weight would balloon. She did not enjoy cooking.[7] She took responsibility for overseeing work crews and for raising funds.[2] She said she became an artist out of love for Christo (if he'd been a dentist, she said she'd have become a dentist).[8]

Jeanne-Claude died in New York City on November 18, 2009, from complications due to a brain aneurysm. Her body was to be donated to science, one of her wishes.[9]

Former Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg described The Gates as “one of the most exciting public art projects ever put on anywhere in the world—and it would never have happened without Jeanne-Claude.”[1] Jeanne-Claude said, "Our art has absolutely no purpose, except to be a work of art. We do not give messages."[10] She also said, "Artists don't retire. They die. That's all. When they stop being able to create art, they die."[11]

When she died, she and Christo were at work on Over the River, a set of fabric panels over the Arkansas River in Colorado (begun in 1992)[7] and The Mastaba, a stack of 410,000 oil barrels configured as a mastaba, a trapezoidal prism, in the United Arab Emirates.[1][12]