Éliane Falliex

Liane Foly (born in 1962 in Lyon) is a popular French blues and jazz singer, actress, presenter and impressionist, born Eliane Falliex in the 7th arrondissement of Lyon. Her parents, a merchant family in French Algeria, returned to France in 1962 with the Pied-Noir community and moved to Lyon, near the Perrache quarter, where they owned La droguerie du sourire. As a child of five she practised dancing, and at age twelve she sang with her parents' orchestra Black and White, with her brother Philippe on the drums and her sister Corinne at the piano. She studied languages for her Baccalaureat and is bilingual in French and English. Her brother is Philippe Falliex, a French composer for television and radio shows, who composed several of her songs and accompanied her on stage as a drummer.

In 1984, Foly was discovered by Philippe Viennet and Andre Manoukian, who offered to write and record a demo for her. After much work she arrived in Paris in 1987 and obtained a meeting with Fabrice Nataf, artistic director and CEO of Virgin France, who launched her career. She took on the name Liane Foly in 1986 in homage to Dali. In 1988 she published her first album, The Man I Love, promoted by the single Ca va, ca vient, which was a commercial success that landed in the top 50, and the same year she performed on stage in Paris at La Cigale.

Foly played a major part in the composition of her 2000 album, Entre nous, while her 1997 album, Cameleon, was her first without Andre Manoukian. Since 1993 she has been a member of Les Enfoires, a union of artists who sing every year at a charity concert for the Restaurants du Coeur, and since 1995 part of the proceeds from two of her albums has gone to AIDS charities. In 2007 she was the godmother of the TV show Telethon and the non-profit organisation Make a Wish in Belgium, and in 2013 she became the godmother of the France women's national football team.