Nightlife Queen Régine, 92
A favorite with the fashion crowd, the entrepreneur and singer once ran a club empire spanning from Rio de Janeiro to Kuala Lumpur.
PARIS — Régine Zylberberg, the nightlife powerhouse who once ran a club empire spanning from Rio de Janeiro to Kuala Lumpur, has died at the age of 92, French media reported.
The redhead long known to the international jet set simply by her first name passed away “peacefully” near Paris on Sunday, her granddaughter Daphné Rotcage told news agency AFP.
“The queen of nightlife has gone: closure due to a long and storied career,” comedian Pierre Palmade wrote in a tribute released at the family's request. Though he and Régine were almost 40 years apart in age, they were close friends and also collaborated onstage.
In addition to running nightclubs, Régine was a singer who performed tunes written by such luminaries as Serge Gainsbourg and Charles Aznavour, and appeared at Carnegie Hall in 1969.
Nicknamed “La Grande Zoa” after one of her songs, Régine often performed wearing a feather boa — though she had also been known to walk around her clubs with a live boa constrictor around her neck.
A Jewish survivor of World War II, the Belgian-born entertainer opened her first nightclub in Paris in 1957, drawing an eclectic crowd.
“There is not a nightclub owner in the history of France who was as famous as she,” journalist Bertrand Dicale said on France Info radio. “She was one of the first to open a place where people come to dance to fashionable records. She was also one of the very first to decide that everyone was welcome and that it would not be a clan, a family, but everyone.”
Singer Line Renaud, Prime Minister Jean Castex, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot were among those who paid tribute to the