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Lolo Ferrari (born 1963 or 1970, died March 5, 2000) was a French dancer and actress billed as "the woman with the largest breasts in the world."
Born Eve Valois in Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dôme, France, she was raised in the resort town of La Baule in an intellectual but extremely dysfunctional family. As a teenager, she obtained a few modelling jobs then in 1988 at age 17 (or 25), she married Eric Vigne, a man 22 years her senior. Seeking stardom and wealth and encouraged by her husband, she reportedly underwent as many as twenty-five operations to create a 71-inch silicone-enhanced bust and to alter her facial appearance. The Guinness Book of Records says each of her breasts weighed 6lb 2oz (2.8kg) and contained 3 litres of serum. She had to wear a specially engineered brassiere and as a result of the many surgeries she suffered from a number of medical afflictions and lived with a heavy regimen of drugs.
The size of her breasts prevented her from sleeping on her stomach or on her back and the lack of proper rest added to her health problems. However, her mental state was the most serious problem that was never treated and according to her husband, she suffered from chronic depression; as well, many feel that she undoubtedly suffered from body dysmorphic disorder.
Adopting the stage name "Lolo," from a French slang word for breasts, along with "Ferrari" as a last name, she made a few pornographic films but use of the Ferrari name (which she justified since it had been her maternal grandfather's name) led to lengthy trademark infringement court battles with the Italian Ferrari automobile company. In 1995, she caused a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival and used the publicity surrounding her enormous creations to obtain a regular role on the British Channel 4 television show, Eurotrash. The media hype led to appearances on other European shows and work in cabaret shows doing a song and striptease act. Ferrari recorded two songs with the hopes of launching a pop music career but for the girl who went to such lengths to obtain the spotlight, she ended up being little more than a sideshow freak, the constant butt of jokes and the object of a cult-like following.
On the morning of March 5, 2000, she was found dead at her home in Grasse in the Alpes-Maritimes département on the French Riviera, apparently the victim of a self-induced prescription drug overdose. According to statements made by her husband who had found her body, she had been planning her own funeral, and a few days prior to her suicide had visited an undertaker and picked out a white coffin, saying she wished to be buried with her favorite teddy bear.
Her husband was later arrested because of new evidence and inconsistencies in his version of the events leading up to her death—for instance, the drugs in her stomach had not begun to enter her bloodstream, and her body showed signs of mechanically-induced suffocation.
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