Ginette Moulin, the owner of French department store group Galeries Lafayette, died on Sunday at the age of 98, the group confirmed to the AFP agency on Tuesday.

Moulin was the granddaughter of Théophile Bader, who founded the department store with Alphonse Kahn in Paris in 1894.

With her family, Moulin was ranked 34th in Challenges magazine’s list of French billionaires, with a business fortune worth €4.05 billion.

In August 2024, Moulin handed over the reins of the family holding company Motier to her son-in-law Philippe Houzé, assisted by her grandchildren Nicolas Houzé, Guillaume Houzé and Arthur Lemoine. The group said the handover had been planned “well in advance.”

Moulin was a key figure in the family history of Galeries Lafayette. She personally knew the members of the five generations that successively took the helm of the iconic Parisian store with its flagship on Boulevard Haussmann.

She was born on February 7 1927, the daughter of Max Heilbronn, a resistance fighter deported during World War II to Buchenwald, Germany, where he met Etienne Moulin, the man who later was to marry his daughter.

As of January 2025, the Galeries Lafayette group operated 57 branches in France, of which 19 are directly owned and 38 operated by franchised partners.

In January, the group said it is planning to close by the end of 2025 its two branches in Marseilles, which “have been posting recurring losses for several years,” and pledged to “promote the redeployment of the 145 employees concerned.”

At the end of 2023, the group sold another iconic Parisian department store, the Bazar de l’Hotel de Ville (BHV), ceding it to a small property company named Société des Grands Magasins (SGM).

Major Carrefour shareholder 

Philippe Houzé, who was named Galeries Lafayette board chairman in 2005 and will succeed Moulin as president of Motier, is the husband of Christiane, one of the Moulin couple’s three daughters.

“He will be tasked with overseeing the growth of the Moulin family’s assets, which include the Galeries Lafayette group, [French e-tailer] La Redoute, and a significant stake in the Carrefour group,” said Galeries Lafayette in January.

The Galeries Lafayette owners have been major shareholders of French grocery distribution giant Carrefour since 2014, even if they are not the main shareholder from March 2024, when Carrefour bought 25 million of its shares from Galfa, a company owned by the Moulin family.

In this capacity, Philippe Houzé is vice-chairman of the board of directors at Carrefour, which also includes Patricia Moulin Lemoine, Ginette Moulin’s eldest daughter.

Three of Ginette Moulin’s grandchildren, Nicolas Houzé, Guillaume Houzé and Arthur Lemoine, were also appointed vice-presidents of Motier.

“Planned” handover

This governance change came at the end of a chaotic period for the Galeries Lafayette group, which for several years has been impacted by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on its global business.

The pandemic and related travel restrictions deprived the group of large parts of its clientèle, and business was severely undermined by the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.

In mid-December, event sales website BazarChic, owned by Galeries Lafayette, began a “winding down procedure” that various media outlets said would threaten about 100 jobs, unless a buyer is found.

Last June, Galeries Lafayette indicated that in 2024 it wanted to recapture its 2019 revenue level, equivalent to €3.85 billion generated by the chain as a whole. Galeries Lafayette, which celebrated its 130th anniversary in 2024, reported €3.6 billion worth of sales by the chain in 2023, of which €1.9 billion by the Boulevard Haussmann branch alone.