Anne Pépin

Life & Legacy

Anne Pépin (c. 1747 – 1837) was the richest and most celebrated woman on the West African island of Gorée in French Senegal. Pépin, born to a European man and an African woman, was born into the Afro-European class known as habitants. In 1786, she entered a relationship with the governor Stanislas de Boufflers at the same time that he moved the capital of Senegal from Saint Louis to Gorée. Pépin held the designation of signare, a prestigious social and economic designation for women who formed partnerships with European men and, as such, wielded great power. Pépin lived in the "golden age of the habitants, and her life illustrates how this class functioned as an intermediary group in Afro-European relations."