The first woman prime minister of France and the fifth prime minister appointed by President François Mitterrand, Edith Cresson (born 1934) was named to the office May 15, 1991.

Edith Cresson was born January 27, 1934, in a fashionable Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. Her father was a senior civil servant. Raised by a British nanny, she became fluent in the English language. Cresson attended the School of Advanced Commercial Studies, earning a degree in business and later a doctorate in demography.

A successful businesswoman, she added a second career in politics when she met François Mitterrand in 1965. For the next 26 years the future president helped Cresson advance through the ranks of what is now the French Socialist Party, calling her "my little soldier."

After Mitterrand became president in 1981, Cresson served first as minister of agriculture (1981-1983), then as minister of external trade and tourism (1983-1984), as minister of industrial...