Françoise Héritier was born on November 15, 1933, in Veauche, in the Loire department. An anthropologist, ethnologist, and feminist activist, she was the second woman, after Jacqueline de Romilly, to be appointed professor at the Collège de France. Her childhood, spent in Auvergne in close contact with the farming community—from which her grandparents came—instilled in her a love for the language of the land, manual skills, and a keen sense of differences in behavior and social status.
She discovered ethnology by chance while taking a course taught by Claude Lévi-Strauss in the Department of Religious Studies at the École pratique des hautes études. In 1957, on the recommendation of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Françoise Héritier was hired by the federal government of French West Africa to conduct a survey in Upper Volta, followed by other assignments. In total, she spent nearly five years conducting fieldwork among the Samo, Pana, Mossi, Bobo, and Dogon peoples. From 1961 to 1966, she directed the Center for Documentary Analysis on Black Africa. In 1967, she joined the CNRS and became a member of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France under Claude Lévi-Strauss. She became director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in 1980.
In 1982, Françoise Héritier joined the Collège de France, where she succeeded Claude Lévi-Strauss by inaugurating the Chair of Comparative Studies of African Societies, which she held until 1998.
Her body of work earned her numerous honors, including the CNRS Silver Medal (1978), the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize (2001), and the ranks of Officer of the Legion of Honor, Grand Cross of the Order of Merit, and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Among her many books and publications are, notably, *Human Aspects of Hydro-Agricultural Development in the Sourou Valley* (1958); *The Practice of Kinship* (1981); *The Two Sisters and Their Mother* (1994); *On Incest* (1994); On Violence (1996), Masculine/Feminine , Volume 1, “The Thought of Difference” (1996) and Volume 2, “Dissolving Hierarchy” (2002); A Thought in Motion (2009); The Salt of Life (2012); As the Days Go By (2017).
Françoise Héritier passed away on November 15, 2017, in Paris.
Based on the eulogy delivered by Prof. Philippe Descola on the occasion of Françoise Héritier’s passing.