Women · Economy & Business · Unusual · International · Portrait

Florence Öğutgen: the Lady of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar

7 April 2026Photos and text: Jérémie Labbé13 images

Florence Öğutgen : la Dame du Grand Bazar d’Istanbul

01 / 13 · 7 April 2026Jérémie Labbé / Collectif DR

In 1983, Florence Heilbronn, a 23-year-old from Strasbourg freshly graduated in journalism, discovered Istanbul and fell in love twice over: with a Turkish man she met at the Grand Bazaar and with this world city straddling two continents. Forty-three years later, she embodies an improbable “success story”: the only woman carpet merchant in the Grand Bazaar, under the name Öğutgen, in a megacity of 16 million inhabitants where this trade remains a male bastion.

Her path was anything but mapped out. After a difficult start in journalism in Paris, she settled in Istanbul in 1983, right in the aftermath of the military coup. For fifteen years, she devoted herself to her family and to volunteer work, while supporting her husband in developing a leather and carpet business.

Everything changed in 1998: the bankruptcy of the family business and the separation forced her to take over the carpet store, in which she had invested her inheritance. Armed with unshakeable resilience, outspokenness and a keen business sense, she made her mark in this ultra-competitive world, earning the respect of her peers. At the same time, she went into politics as a Councilor for French Nationals Abroad, strengthening ties between France and Turkey.

Today, this strong-willed cigar smoker is a key figure of the Grand Bazaar, a symbol of successful integration and unwavering determination. She has become “the Lady of the Grand Bazaar.”

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13 images