a French playwright, actor, and poet, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world literature

a French jeweler and glass designer known for his creations of glass art, perfume bottles, vases, jewelry, chandeliers, clocks, and automobile hood ornaments

a Danish-French impressionist painter; considered by some to be the true father of impressionism

a French-Italian actor and singer; most famous for his role as "Papet" in the "Jean de Florette" duology

a French singer, lyricist and actress who specialized in la chanson réaliste; she is noted as France's national chanteuse and is one of the country's most widely known stars

a French writer, poet, and a socialist feminist

a French pharmaceutical manufacturer, chocolatier, and politician; he built Menier Chocolate into France's largest chocolate manufacturer

a French philologist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology

a Polish romantic composer who spent most of his career in France; he is known for his expressive piano pieces

a French actress and recipient of numerous acting awards; best known for "Room at the Top" and "Les Diaboliques"

a French poet and writer and the founder of the Unanimism literary movement; his works include the play "Knock ou le Triomphe de la médecine"

a French realist novelist who was chiefly remembered for his series of 91 interconnected novels and stories known collectively as "La Comédie humaine" which pictures urban society as amoral and brutal

a French actress considered the best performer of her era; sometimes known for her extravagant behavior - such as sleeping in a coffin

a French composer of the Romantic era; best known for his opera, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire

a French fashion designer and businesswoman; she was credited in the post-World War I era with popularizing a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style

a French journalist and author of detective fiction; he is best known for writing the novel The Phantom of the Opera

a French painter who used a impressionism called "super-realism" to capture the overall impression of the thing he was painting

a French educator and inventor of a reading and writing system consisting of dots for use by people who are visually impaired

a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture

a French author, remembered as a master of the short story form; he is most well known for his story "La Parure" (or "The Necklace")

a French trunk-maker who eventually founded a luxurious luggage company; it is now a fashion house best known for selling high-end handbags.

a French novelist, poet, and dramatist; his best known novels are "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" and "Les Misérables"

a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity

the last Queen of France before the French Revolution; she was unpopular due to her extravagant lifestyle and her opposition to reform contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy

Empress of the French as the first wife of Emperor Napoleon I; although she was popular among the people, he divorced her because she was unable to give him an heir

a French soldier who joined General Washington's staff and became a general in the Continental Army.

a French designer known for simple, elegant, beautifully made gowns worn by stars such as Audrey Hepburn, who became the brand's ambassador

a Belgian inventor and musician who invented the saxophone in the early 1840s

a French can-can dancer made famous by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec through his paintings

a nineteenth-century French painter and sculptor; among his preferred subjects were ballet dancers and scenes of café life.

a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist and pioneering aviator; most well known for his novel "Le Petit Prince" (The Little Prince)

a French official who served as prefect of Seine, chosen by Emperor Napoleon III to carry out a massive urban renewal program of new boulevards, parks and public works in Paris

a French actor who is one of the best-known mimes in history

a French post-Impressionist artist who devised the painting technique known as pointillism

a prominent Liégeois physicist, stage magician and influential developer of phantasmagoria (scéance parlor tricks and projection effects)

a French writer who sought to integrate psychological elements, especially regarding suppressed memories, into literature. His most famous work is the multi-volume Remembrance of Things Past. (The film "Ratatouille" pays homage to him toward the end.)

a French diplomat and later developer of the Suez Canal, which joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas, substantially reducing sailing distances and times between Europe and East Asia

a French poet who is best known for his "calligrammes" - poems in which the letterforms are arranged to form a visual design, figure, or pictograph

a watchmaker, inventor, playwright, musician, diplomat; wrote "The Barber of Seville" and "The Marriage of Figaro"

a French aeronaut who was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist

a French naval officer and oceanographer who co-invented the first successful Aqua-Lung, open-circuit SCUBA

a French painter and printmaker; his Rococo-style of painting served as an inspiration for the look of the film "Tangled"

a Canadian-born actress and singer, who appeared in musical films in the 1930s and 1940s

a French singer who wrote more than 800 songs, and then recorded more than 1,000 of them in French, English, Italian, German and Spanish

a French tennis player and six-time Wimbledon champion; also represented France at the 1920 Olympic Games