Édith Giovanna Gassion (Édith Piaf)

Édith Giovanna Gassion (1915–1963) was born in poverty in the Belleville quarter of Paris, singing on street corners as a child alongside her contortionist father. Discovered in 1935 by cabaret proprietor Louis Leplée, he nicknamed her La Môme Piaf ('The Little Sparrow') for her tiny 4-foot-8 frame and nervous energy.

Dressed always in a simple black dress, Piaf commanded international stages with a voice of volcanic emotional power and raw tragic drama. She wrote her international signature song La Vie en rose (1945), composed Hymne à l'amour following the tragic plane crash death of her great love, boxer Marcel Cerdan, and triumphed at the Paris Olympia in 1960 with her defiant anthem Non, je ne regrette rien. Over 100,000 mourners stopped traffic across Paris for her burial at Père Lachaise.