Françoise d' Eaubonne (1920–2005)

Françoise d'Eaubonne was born in Paris and grew up in Toulouse. Her childhood was marked by the progressive illness of her father Etienne d’Eaubonne, a painter who had been exposed to gas in the trenches during World War I; and her mother Rosita's pain for the Republican refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. As a young woman, Françoise endured the Germany Occupation of France in World War II; after the war, in Paris, she witnessed the return of French Jews from the concentration camps. She said her experiences helped form her into a radical and militant feminist. She earned a bachelor's degree from the Faculté des lettres et Ecole des beaux-arts in Toulouse. She joined the French Communist Party, and in 1971 co-founded with Guy Hocquenghem the group Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (FHAR). She coined the term "écologie-féminisme" ("ecofeminism") in her book Le féminisme ou la mort (1974), to synthesize two movements: ecology and feminism. Françoise d'Eaubonne saw clear interconnections between the male domination of women and human domination of nature. She hoped by making the connection explicit to help save the planet from destruction. Her ideas brought her into contact with many influential writers, artists, and thinkers of the 20th century, including Colette, Nathalie Sarraute, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau, and Simone de Beauvoir, who became a close friend. In the 1960s, she supported the Algerian independence movement. She had two children with her first husband Jacques Aubenque, and in 1976 announced in the newspaper Libération that she had married Pierre Sanna, serving time in prison for a murder he said he did not commit. Beginning with her first volume of poetry published in 1942, Françoise d'Eaubonne wrote more than 50 works, ranging from essays to biographies to historical novels and science fiction, and was a presenter on French radio.