Léone-Noëlle Meyer

Léone-Noëlle Meyer (born 8 November 1939) is a French heiress, pediatrician, businesswoman and philanthropist. The adoptive granddaughter of the founder of the Galeries Lafayette, she served as its chairman from 1998 to 2005. She was a pediatrician for 45 years. She has made humanitarian trips to South America, Africa and Asia, and she has supported Jewish causes and the Paris Opera. She was awarded the 2007 Medal of the Great Donor by the French Ministry of Culture for her philanthropy.

Early life Léone-Noëlle Meyer was born on 8 November 1939 in Paris. Her father was unknown; her mother was a seamstress. She grew up in an orphanage in Rueil-Malmaison until 1946, when she was adopted by Yvonne Bader, the daughter of Théophile Bader, the founder of the Galeries Lafayette, She grew up in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. She earned a doctorate in medicine in 1972.

Personal life Meyer married to Georges Meyer in 1964;

Nazi-looted art restitution case In 2014, Meyer sued the University of Oklahoma and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum for the return of a Camille Pissarro painting that had been looted by Nazis from her father, Raoul Meyer, in 1941 during the German occupation of France. The refusal of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum caused Oklahoma's Republican state representative Mike Reynolds to call on the American Association of Museums to review the museum's accredidation status for violating ethical bylaws.

In 2016, after a long legal battle, during which the museum refused to restitute Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep (Bergère rentrant des moutons) by Camille Pissarro, Meyer arrived at a settlement with Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, and was able to bring the painting back to France.

However the settlement specified that the painting not remain in France but, after five years, return to the United States and that the process of transferring the painting be repeated every three years in a kind of shared custody agreement. The painting, which had been displayed at Paris’ Musée d’Orsay since its return to France, was due to return to Oklahoma in 2021. In 2020 Meyers contested the agreement as unworkable, initiating a legal action in a French court. The Fred Jones Jr Museum sued Meyers, demanding that she be fined "$3.5m in the US and face penalties of up to $100,000 a day for contempt of court if she does not halt proceedings in France in which she is seeking full ownership of the impressionist work".

On 1 June 2021, Meyer, who was 81 years old, abandoned the fight, relinquishing ownership of the Pissarro painting to the University of Oklahoma, stating, "I have no other choice.