Wassila Ben Ammar

Wassila Ben Ammar Bourguiba (; April 22, 1912 – June 22, 1999) was the second wife of the former Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba and the First Lady of Tunisia from 1962 until 1986. She was called Majda (venerable). Biography Family, youth and marriage Ben Ammar's father, lawyer Mhamed Ben Ammar, belonged to a relatively impoverished Tunisian bourgeois family previously composed of senior officials and large landowners. Her mother, Fatma Dellagi, also came from the Tunisian bourgeoisie. Wassila met Bourguiba for the first time on 12 April 1943, when she came to congratulate him on his release after five years of detention. "It was love at first sight", wrote Habib Bourguiba in his autobiography Ma vie, mon œuvre (French: "My Life, My Work"). Wassila at that time already had a daughter by a small landowner.