Claude Pompidou | Wife of French leader, 94

Claude Pompidou, 94, the widow of former French President Georges Pompidou, died Tuesday in Paris.

President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Mrs. Pompidou as "a very great lady" who "brought honor to our country." But he also said she "suffered because she did not always appreciate the very cruel side of political life" and chose to live "very discreetly" after her husband's death in office in 1974.

Premier Francois Fillon said the Pompidous had a passion for abstract art. The Pompidou Center, a modern-art museum in Paris that opened in 1977, bears the former president's name.

The couple met in Paris, when she was a first-year student of law. They married in Chateau-Gontier, a town in the west-central Mayenne region where her father was a doctor. In 1970, she established a foundation to help handicapped children, the elderly and hospital patients. - AP