Galeries Lafayette Owner Ginette Moulin Dies Aged 98

The majority owner of the emblematic Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette, Ginette Moulin, has died aged 98, the company told AFP Tuesday.

Moulin, who died on Sunday, was the granddaughter of Theophile Bader, who co-founded the store in 1894.

The net business worth of Moulin and her family is estimated at 4.05 billion euros ($4.18 billion), putting her in 34th place on the list of France's richest people compiled by the magazine Challenges.

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Over her lifetime, Moulin saw six leadership generations running the Galeries Lafayette flagship store situated in the Opera district of the French capital.

She was "a committed benefactor and a patron of artists who believed in the power of culture and creativity," the Galeries Lafayette said about her Tuesday.

Her father, Max Heilbronn, was arrested in 1943 and taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where he became friends with Etienne Moulin who later married Ginette. The couple had three children.

Beyond the main store, the Galeries Lafayette empire counts 56 other outlets in France, of which it runs 18 itself and 38 are managed as a franchise by partners.

But a shift towards online shopping, accelerated by Covid restrictions, has hurt Galeries Lafayette's business model that relies on footfall in bricks-and-mortar stores.

The group is planning to close two stores in the southern port city of Marseille because of recurring losses.

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In 2023, it spun off another mythical Paris store, the Bazar de l'Hotel de Ville (BHV), situated near the capital's Marais district.

However, the group said last year that it hoped to bring sales volumes back to pre-Covid levels.