Model And Activist Katoucha Dead At 47

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The daughter of author, playwright and historian Djibril Tamsir Niane, Katoucha lived in exile during her childhood after her father came in conflict with Guinean President Sekou Toure. She lived with an uncle in Mali until the age of 12 when she reunited with her family in Dakar. She married her husband at the age of seventeen. After the birth of her first child the family emigrated to France.

In the 1980s Katoucha began her career as a super model working for Thierry Mugler, then Paco Rabanne and Christian Lacroix. She was a "muse" for Yves Saint Laurent. Her latest endeavor was working as the host of the French version of Top Model.

Katoucha was more than a mere model. In 1994 she became a outspoken activist against female circumcision. The cruel rite had been performed on her as a young girl of nine. She started KPLCE, an organisation that battles against the act.

'One day, mother said we were going to the cinema. And I found myself the victim of a horror movie. 'An unimaginable trauma that I had never managed to talk about, until I found love and wrote In My flesh,' she said.

She said she saw her success as a form of revenge for the excision.

'I embodied the most arrogant and admired kind of femininity, I who was supposed to be diminished.'

Returning home from a party January 31, 2008 it is thought that she slipped into the river Seine where she lived on a houseboat. The police issued a missing person's report on the 4th of that month. On February 28, 2008 her body was found in the river. The death of 48 year old Katoucha has been ruled an accidental drowning.

She leaves behind three children.