Isabelle Aubret

Biography

Isabelle Aubret (born Thérèse Coquerelle; 27 July 1938) is a French singer best known for winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1962 with the song "Un premier amour".

Thérèse Coquerelle was born in Lille, France, on 27 July 1938. She was the fifth of eleven children; her father was a foreman in a spinning mill, while her mother, of Ukrainian origin, was a housewife. Coquerelle trained in gymnastics as a child, and in 1952 she won the national French Gymnastics Championship. That same year, she left school and was hired as a winder in the Lemaire-Destombes factory in Saint-André, where her father worked.

A few years later, she returned to this spinning mill to sing in the theatre of her fa...