Laurence Ferrari is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 of Italian origin, and currently anchor of the TF1

TF1

TF1 is a national French TV channel, controlled by TF1 Group, whose major share-holder is Bouygues. TF1's average market share of 24% makes it the most popular domestic network...

 weekday evening news. It is the most viewed news television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 programme in Europe.

Early life and education

Ferrari was born in Aix-les-Bains

Aix-les-Bains

Aix-les-Bains is a commune in the Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France.It is situated on the shore of Lac du Bourget, by rail north of Chambéry.-Geography:...

, Savoie

Savoie

Savoie is a French department located in the Rhône-Alpes region in the French Alps.Together with the Haute-Savoie, Savoie is one of the two departments of the historic region of Savoy that was annexed by France on June 14, 1860, following the signature of the Treaty of Turin on March 24, 1860...

 in 1966, as the daughter of the former mayor of the city and member of the National Assembly of France, Gratien Ferrari, and has Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 ancestry. She attended the École Française des Attachés de Presse (French School of Press Secretary) in Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

 and graduated from the Sorbonne University with a Master of 'Communication Politique and Sociale'. She is the oldest of three sisters.

Media career

She started her career in 1986 as a copywriter at the AFP

Agence France-Presse

Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...

 and Le Figaro Magazine

Le Figaro

Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...

. She was also on the Europe 1

Europe 1

Europe 1, formerly known as Europe n° 1, is a privately owned radio network created in 1955. It is one of the leading French radio broadcasters and heard throughout France...

 radio as a chronicler on health policy. She began her television career in 1994 with Michel Drucker

Michel Drucker

Michel Drucker, CQ is a popular French journalist and TV host.Michel Drucker was born in Vire, Calvados, in Normandy. Jacques Drucker, a doctor, is Michel's younger brother, and Jean Drucker, a TV top executive, is Michel's older brother. He started a journalistic career in 1965 at the ORTF as...

 in Studio Gabriel on France 2

France 2

France 2 is a French public national television channel. It is part of the state-owned France Télévisions group, along with France 3, France 4, France 5 and France Ô...

 and thereafter with Jean-Pierre Pernaut

Jean-Pierre Pernaut

Jean-Pierre Pernaut is a news reader and broadcaster on French television. He is widely known simply by his initials, JPP....

 in "Combien ça coûte ?" on TF1

TF1

TF1 is a national French TV channel, controlled by TF1 Group, whose major share-holder is Bouygues. TF1's average market share of 24% makes it the most popular domestic network...

. In 2001 she co-hosted the TF1 Sunday evening magazine Sept à Huit with her former husband Thomas Hugues. After her divorce, she moved in 2006 to Canal + to present the channel's weekly political magazine "Dimanche +" where she covered the French presidential election of 2007

French presidential election, 2007

The 2007 French presidential election, the ninth of the Fifth French Republic was held to elect the successor to Jacques Chirac as president of France for a five-year term.The winner, decided on 5 and 6 May 2007, was Nicolas Sarkozy...

. In June 2008, she was announced as the new anchor of "Le 20 Heures de TF1", the most watched television evening news of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 replacing Patrick Poivre d'Arvor

Patrick Poivre d'Arvor

Patrick Poivre d'Arvor is a French TV journalist and writer. He is a household name in France, and nicknamed PPDA. With over 30 years and in excess of 4,500 editions of television news to his credit, he was one of the longest serving newsreaders in the world until he was fired in 2008...

, after twenty-one years presenting the show, and began as anchor on August 25, 2008.

Ferrari incited controversy in 2010 by wearing a veil to interview Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Humanitarian Work

Laurence Ferrari has been an ambassador for SOS Children's Villages

SOS Children's Villages

SOS Children's Villages is an independent, non-governmental international development organisation which has been working to meet the needs and protect the interests and rights of children since 1949. It was founded by Hermann Gmeiner in Imst, Austria...

 since November 2003.

In March 2007, along with other very famous personalities including journalists Claire Chazal

Claire Chazal

Claire Chazal is a French journalist, romance writer, and director of news at a national television station, TF1....

, Marie Drucker

Marie Drucker

Marie Drucker is a French journalist and television personality.-Life:The daughter of Jean Drucker, a French television executive, and a niece of Michel Drucker, a television journalist, she was educated at the Sorbonne, where she received a degree in modern literature...

, Tina Keiffer, Béatrice Schönberg

Béatrice Schönberg

Béatrice Schönberg is a French TV journalist on France 2 for the 8 pm weekend news. Her newscasts can be seen on TV5 in Canada on weekends at 6:30 pm North American Eastern Time...

 and Mélissa Theuriau

Mélissa Theuriau

Mélissa Theuriau is a French journalist and news anchor for M6. She studied Journalism and became a newscaster on TV. She became an internet phenomenon when a compilation of her reading news was uploaded and newspapers voted her the world's most beautiful news reporter...

, she sponsored the La Rose Marie Claire project with UNICEF to help educate young girls.

Private Life

In October 2007, Laurence Ferrari and Thomas Hugues

Thomas Hugues

Thomas Hughes is a French journalist, producer and television host.-Early life:He joined the Institut d'Études Politiques of Bordeaux in 1983. During his schooling, he did an internship for the newspaper Sud Ouest. In 1987, he entered the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme of Lille.-Career:In 1989,...

 separated on friendly terms, after 14 years of marriage (since 1993) and two children (a son and a daughter), ending the life of a media couple.

Since 2008, Laurence Ferrari has been spending her life with musician Renaud Capuçon. They were married in July 2009 in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and have one son together (born in November 2010.