Trần Lệ Xuân (22 August 1924 – 24 April 2011), more popularly known in English as Madame Nhu, was the de facto First Lady of South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963. She was the wife of Ngô Đình Nhu, who was the brother and chief advisor to President Ngô Đình Diệm. As Diệm was a lifelong bachelor and because she and her family lived in Independence Palace together with him, she was considered to be the first lady. Known for her harsh and incendiary comments that denounced anti-government protests by some Buddhist sects and the strong U.S. influence and presence in the country, she went to live in exile in France after her husband and her brother-in-law, Diệm, were assassinated in 1963. Early years Trần Lệ Xuân, whose given name means "Spring's Beauty," was born into a wealthy aristocratic family in Hanoi, French Indochina, then part of the French colonial empire. Her paternal grandfather was close to the French colonial administration, while her father, Trần Văn Chương, studied law in France and practiced in Bac Lieu in the Mekong Delta before marrying into the ruling imperial dynasty. Her father also served as the first foreign secretary for Indochina under Japanese occupation. Her mother, Thân Thị Nam Trân, was a granddaughter of Emperor Đồng Khánh and a cousin of Emperor Bảo Đại. The Trầns were under observation by the French police who doubted their loyalty to France, with M. Chương dismissed as a "little runt" controlled by his wife, while Madame Chương, described as "beautiful and very intriguing...the one who directs her husband," was known for "her dogged ambition as for her —sleeping around with people of influence from any and all nationalities." Madame Chuong was accused by the French secret police (French Sûreté) of sleeping with Japanese diplomats so her husband was hired by them. Lệ Xuân's education at the Lycée Albert Sarraut, a prestigious French school in Hanoi, was entirely in French, and she remembered as a schoolgirl learning about French history but nothing about Vietnamese history, and of singing songs about the forests and mountains of France, observing later the purpose of her education was to eradicate any sense of a Vietnamese identity, and to make her into a proper young Frenchwoman. The purpose of French educational policies in Vietnam was always in reference to France's self-proclaimed ("civilizing mission") to make all Vietnamese into "Frenchmen with yellow skin,"