Katoucha Niane was a Guinean supermodel and activist based in France. The ethereal beauty was one of the few African models burning up the runways in the 1980s and was Yves St Laurent’s muse. She stopped her modeling career in 1994 to focus on her campaign against female genital mutilation, a practice she was so opposed to because she was victimized at the age of 9, an act that led her to become a model, stating “I embodied the most arrogant and admired kind of femininity, I who was supposed to be diminished.”
The mother of three lived on a houseboat on the Seine. She had gone missing and her body was found on 2/29. Our thoughts and prayers are with her loved ones.
