Mazarine Pingeot

Mazarine Marie Pingeot (born 18 December 1974) who changed her name to Mazarine Marie Mitterrand Pingeot in November 2016, is a French writer, journalist and professor. Pingeot is the daughter of former French president François Mitterrand and his mistress Anne Pingeot. She is said to be named after the Bibliothèque Mazarine, the oldest library in France, because of her parents' love for books. She could also be named after cardinal Mazarin, who was admired by her father. Her existence was long hidden from the press but was once almost revealed by the French writer Jean-Edern Hallier. Keeping Mazarine Pingeot's identity from the public was one of the motivations behind some of the illegal wiretapping that Mitterrand ordered under the guise of fighting terrorism.

She was a student first at the elite Lycée Henri-IV in Paris and then at the École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud (now named the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon), a highly prestigious school. In 1997, she passed the agrégation de philosophie, and then briefly started - but did not complete - a Ph.D. thesis on the philosopher Spinoza, working as a teaching assistant at the Université de Provence Aix-Marseille I.

She was also a journalist (writing for Elle between 1999 and 2001) and a television anchor (on a French cable television channel, Paris Première).