The Swiss socialite and cosmetic surgery aficionado Jocelyne Wildenstein, sometimes known as “Catwoman” due to her extensive plastic surgery, has died, her partner said on Wednesday.

“It is with heavy heart and with great sadness that Mr Lloyd Klein announces the unexpected death of his beloved fiancée and longtime companion, Jocelyne Wildenstein,” the fashion designer said in an English-language statement sent to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

Klein said that “Mrs Wildenstein died peacefully in her sleep in the late afternoon of December 31st, 2024 in her … suite in Paris where the couple had taken temporary residence.”

Wildenstein, nee Jocelynnys Dayannys da Silva Bezerra Périsset, became a New York socialite after marrying the art dealer Alec Wildenstein, of the French art dealing and thoroughbred racing dynasty, with whom she had two children.

She was referred to variously as Jocelyne and Jocelyn in the English-language media. She was born in 1940 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and died on 31 December at the age of 84.

It was Wildenstein’s extensive self-remodeling to make herself look more “feline”, inspired by wild big cats – along with a reported $2.5bn divorce settlement and $100m each year for 13 years afterward – that caught the public’s attention.

She had spent time in Africa with the European film-maker Sergio Gobbi , telling New York magazine: “Africa is a paradise. You meet people who look at life differently. They love the adventure.”

She had met her husband, Alec Wildenstein, while on safari in Kenya and married him a year later in Las Vegas. Then Wildenstein embarked on a cosmetic adventure to look more like a big cat.

According to the Daily Mail, she spent £2m on surgeries, apparently to please her husband, who loved the big cats. She kept a lynx as a pet, telling Vanity Fair “the lynx has perfect eyes”.

But her husband told Vanity Fair: “She was crazy. I would always find out last. She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture. Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn’t listen.”

But a messy divorce came with rumours spread by her ex-husband that she had been a courtesan withMadame Claude, the Parisian bordello owner. During the divorce, he was reported to have cut her monthly allowance from $150,000 to $50,000.

A judge overseeing her divorce settlement reportedly stipulated that she could not use any of the settlement for further surgery.

“I never wanted to change my face,” she told the French television news channel C8 this autumn, though admitting she might have wanted her lips to be a little thicker.

She denied rumours she embarked on cosmetic surgery to keep her ex-husband.

Interview magazine last remarked that Wildenstein had “been one of the jet set’s most outrageous characters for nearly five decades”. In a conversation with the outlet, Wildenstein estimated that she spent more than $700,000 a year on food, wine, flowers, pills and more, adding “and that was just the beginning”.

Where some saw extremism, others saw beauty.

“I remember seeing you once at Beige [a legendary Tuesday-night party at the Bowery Bar and Grill in New York City]. It was burned into my brain forever because the glamour was turned up so high,” wrote the editor and interviewer Mel Ottenberg.

Ottenberg asked Wildenstein about her love of big cats. She explained there were 2,000 animals at Ol Jogi [the Wildenstein family ranch in Kenya] under protection.

“We have everything except lions, because they would kill what we are trying to protect,” she said. Asked for her favourite animal, she said she liked all animals, but settled on the leopard, saying it was because they become attached to only one person.

“Leopards are jealous,” she said.

Wildenstein said that huge press attention based on her appearance had usefully kept her in the public eye during her divorce.

“Journalists can say whatever they like … it’s really not my problem.”

AFP contributed reporting

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