Madame Brassart

Élisabeth Brassart (1897–1992) was the proprietor of the Le Cordon Bleu school in Paris from 1945 to 1984. Le Cordon Bleu had been founded in 1895 by Marthe Distel and Henri-Paul Pellaprat. In 1945, after the end of WWII, she purchased what had become a struggling school from a Catholic orphanage which had inherited it after the school's founder died in the late 1930s. The present owner, André J. Cointreau, purchased it from Brassart, who was an old family friend. Brassart managed to attract many notable chefs to teach at the Le Cordon Bleu under her tenure, among them Max Bugnard, Claude Thillmont, and Pierre Mangelatte. The school was a very international school under her leadership. Students came from the United States, Japan and around the world. Madame Brassart managed the school until 1984, at the age of 87, she decided it was time to retire.