Background and career
Carla Bruni-Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi; Italian pronunciation: [ˈkarla dʒilˈbɛrta ˈbruːni teˈdeski]; 23 December 1967) is an Italian and French singer, songwriter and fashion model who served as the first lady of France from 2008—when she married then president Nicolas Sarkozy—to 2012.
She was born in Italy and moved to France at the age of seven. Bruni was a model from 1987 to 1997 before taking up a career in music. She wrote several songs for Julien Clerc that were featured on his 2000 album, Si j'étais elle. Bruni released her first album, Quelqu'un m'a dit, in 2003, which eventually spent 34 weeks in the top 10 of the French Albums Chart. Bruni won the Victoire Award for Female Artist of the Year at the 2004 Victoires de la Musique. The same year, Bruni released her second album, No Promises, then the following year, she released her third album, Comme si de rien n'était. In 2013, Bruni released her fourth album, Little French Songs. In 2017, Bruni released her fifth album, French Touch. In 2024, she walked in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.
Bruni was born in Turin, Italy. She is legally the daughter of Italian concert pianist Marisa Borini and industrialist, classical composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi. In 2008, however, Bruni told Vanity Fair that her biological father is Maurizio Remmert, a classical guitarist who came from a wealthy family. When Remmert met Marisa Borini at a concert in Turin, he was a 19-year-old classical guitarist, and their affair lasted six years. Her sister is actress and movie director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. She had a brother, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi (1959 – 4 July 2006), who died from complications of HIV/AIDS. Her (legal) paternal grandparents and her maternal grandfather were Italian, while the last quarter of her ancestry is French. She is second cousin of Alessandra Martines.
Bruni is an heiress to the fortune created by the Italian tyre manufacturing company CEAT, founded in the 1920s by her legal grandfather, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi. The company was sold in the 1970s to Pirelli (the brand continues in its former subsidiary in India, founded in 1958). The family moved to France in 1975, purportedly to escape the threat of kidnapping by the Red Brigades, a Communist terrorist group active in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s. Bruni grew up in Paris and attended the finishing school Château Mont-Choisi in Lausanne, Switzerland. She returned to Paris to study art and architecture, but left at 19 to become a model. Through her biological father, Bruni has a half-sister, Consuelo Remmert.
=== 1987–1996: Early career and modelling ===
How Carla Bruni makes money
Bruni is an heiress to the fortune created by the Italian tyre manufacturing company CEAT, founded in the 1920s by her legal grandfather, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi. The company was sold in the 1970s to Pirelli (the brand continues in its former subsidiary in India, founded in 1958).
