Moufida Bourguiba Moufida Bourguiba Moufida Bourguiba (مفيدة بورقيبة), (born Mathilde Lorrain) (24 January 1890 in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés France – 15 November 1976 in Monastir). She was the first wife of the President of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, and the First Lady of Tunisia from 1957 to 1961. She died on 15 November 1976 at the age of 86. Mathilde Lorrain was born in France in 1890 in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Val-de-Marne. She married a French officer, Colonel le Fras who was killed at the very end of the First World War on 11 November 1918. She met Habib Bourguiba in 1925 whilst he was studying law
Habib Bourguiba with Mathilde. This pregnancy reassured him as he thought he was sterile. But the relationship of the couple worsened to a point that Bourguiba left the house to sleep at his friends' place, back at the campus. On 9 April 1927, Mathilde gave birth to a boy, whom they named Jean Habib. They moved into another apartment in Bagneux, in the Parisian suburbs. Bourguiba, sick at the time, had to prepare his final exams, which he sat for a month after the birth of his son. He obtained respectively a bachelor's degree in law and the higher degree of political