Edith Lucie Bongo

Edith Lucie Bongo, born on 10 March 1964 and known in full as Edith Lucie Bongo Ondimba, was a physician who also served as First Lady of Gabon from 1989 until her death in 2009 as the wife of President Omar Bongo. She was the daughter of Denis Sassou Nguesso, later president of the Republic of the Congo, and her marriage was read at the time as a sign of cooperation between the two countries. She studied medicine at Marien Ngouabi University, graduating in 1989, and practised as a pediatrician with HIV and AIDS as one of her main concerns. She helped create a forum of African first ladies against AIDS and founded associations for vulnerable children and for people with disabilities. She was hospitalised in Rabat, Morocco, in 2009 and died there on 14 March 2009, days after her forty-fifth birthday, and was buried in her father's home village of Edu in northern Congo after a state funeral in Libreville.