Vocation : Business : Entrepreneur

André Moynet (July 19, 1921 – May 2, 1993) was a much decorated French wartime fighter pilot who moved on to become a test pilot and an entrepreneur-businessman. He was also a politician.

Lionel Poilâne (June 10, 1945 – October 31, 2002) was a French baker and entrepreneur whose commitment to crafting quality bread earned him worldwide renown. His father, Pierre Poilâne started a baking business in 1932, creating bread using stone-ground flour, natural fermentation and a wood-fired oven. Lionel took over the bakery in 1970, continuing the traditional methods.
Poilâne is widely known for a round, two-kilogram sourdough country bread referred to as a miche or pain Poilâne. This bread is often referred to as whole-wheat but in fact is not: the flour used is mostly so-called grey flour of 85% extraction (meaning that some but not all of the wheat bran is retained). According to Poilâne's own website, the dough also contains 30% spelt, an ancestor of wheat.
In addition to miches, the Poilâne bakery offers rye bread, raisin bread, nut bread, Punitions (shortbread cookies), and an assortment of pastries to its clients. Poilâne is perhaps one of the most famous names in the baking industry today.
Poilâne mastered his single product and trained his apprentices in the physical baking process, which he believed to be the most important aspect of his vision. He believed as much of the work as possible should be done by hand, by one person taking responsibility for their loaves from start to finish. Lionel Poilâne laid the basis of a concept he called "retro-innovation"; combining the best of traditional elements together with the best of modern developments. The only deviation from his father's original formula was machine kneading, saving hours of work for his bakers. He was knighted as a Knight of the National Order of Merit for services to the economy in 1993.
Pain Poilâne is produced in the Latin Quarter of Paris where it is sold at the original boulangerie on rue du Cherche-Midi. A second Paris bakery on boulevard de Grenelle is located in the 15th arrondissement. The worldwide demand for Poilâne bread is met in a facility located in Bièvres which was built in the 1980s. The Bièvres bakery produces around 15,000 loaves per day in 24 wood-burning ovens which are exact replicas of the ovens used at the Paris locations. These loaves are shipped worldwide. The firm opened a facility in London's Belgravia district in June 2000.
On October 31, 2002, Lionel Poilâne was killed when the helicopter he was piloting crashed into the bay of Cancale, off the coast of Brittany. The passengers, Poilâne's wife Irena and their dog, also died in the crash. Poilâne was survived by daughters Athena and Apollonia, who now runs the enterprise. Apollonia is a graduate of Harvard University.Lionel's brother Max Poilâne went his own way and opened his own bakery. There are three Max Poilâne bakery locations in Paris. Bread lovers debate which baker makes the better bread, although Lionel's bread is more famous outside of Paris.

Jean-Charles Naouri (born 8 March 1949) is a French businessman. He is chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder of Groupe Casino.

André Essel (4 September 1918 – 31 March 2005) was the co-founder of Fnac, originally Fédération nationale d’achats des cadres, or National Purchasing Federation for Middle Managers, alongside Max Théret. He was also an anti-fascist activist and a believer in Trotskyism.

Aristide Boucicaut (French: [aʁistid busiko]; July 14, 1810 – December 26, 1877) was a French entrepreneur who created Le Bon Marché, the first modern department store.

Martin Pierre Marie Bouygues (French pronunciation: [maʁtɛ̃ pjɛʁ maʁi bwiɡ]; born 3 May 1952) is the chairman and chief executive officer of the French company Bouygues which employs around 130,000 people globally. It was founded by his father Francis Bouygues in 1952.
In 2015, he was ranked by Forbes as the world's 481st richest person, and is a billionaire.

Georges-Henri Rivière (1897–1985) was a French museologist, and innovator of modern French ethnographic museology practices.

Charles Bianconi (24 September 1786 – 22 September 1875) was an Italo-Irish entrepreneur. Sometimes described as the "man who put Ireland on wheels", he developed a network of horse-drawn coaches that became Ireland's "first regular public transport" system. He eventually became known for his innovations in transport and was twice mayor of Clonmel, in County Tipperary.

Marcel Boussac (17 April 1889 – 21 March 1980) was a French entrepreneur best known for his ownership of the Maison Dior and one of the most successful thoroughbred race horse breeding farms in European history.
Born in Châteauroux, Indre, France, Boussac made a fortune in textile manufacturing. In 1911 he acquired the Château de Mivoisin, a 36 square kilometre property located 1½ hours south of Paris in Dammarie-sur-Loing, Loiret.
In 1941, Boussac was made a member of the National Council of Vichy France.
In 1946, he financed Christian Dior's new Paris fashion house that became one of the most famous clothing and perfume marques. In 1951 Boussac expanded into the newspaper business with the acquisition of L'Aurore.
An avid horseman, Marcel Boussac acquired the Haras de Fresnay-le-Buffard horse breeding farm in Neuvy-au-Houlme in Lower Normandy and the Haras de Jardy in Marnes-la-Coquette. As part of his breeding operation, Boussac bought and sold horses from across Europe plus from the United States. He acquired the U.S. Triple Crown winner Whirlaway and sold the mare La Troienne to Edward R. Bradley's Idle Hour Stock Farm in Lexington, Kentucky who became one of the most influential mares to be imported into the U.S. in the 20th century.
Boussac's horses, carrying Boussac's signature orange silk and grey cap, dominated French horse racing from the 1930s through to the 1960s making his stable the leading money winner fourteen times and the leading breeder on seventeen occasions. In addition to being a six-time winner of France's most important race, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, Boussac's horses also won the prestigious Epsom Derby, Epsom Oaks, 2,000 Guineas, St. Leger Stakes, Ascot Gold Cup and others in the United Kingdom.

With the Fall of France in the Second World War, Boussac paid a British Royal Air Force officer on secret business to fly him from Paris to the UK. This caused the officer Sidney Cotton to be removed from his position. During the German occupation of France in World War II, the Nazis seized some of the best racehorses in the country. They shipped more than six hundred of them out of the country, some to Hungary but most back to Germany for racing or for breeding at the German National Stud. Among them was the champion Pharis, owned by Marcel Boussac.
He was married for many years to the Belgian opera singer Fanny Heldy. They are buried together in the Cimetière de Montmartre in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.
On his death in 1980, Boussac's estate was liquidated and L'Aurore sold to Robert Hersant who merged it with his Le Figaro newspaper. The property itself would eventually be acquired by Stavros Niarchos. The Aga Khan IV had purchased the bulk of the Boussac farm's breeding stock in 1978 when Boussac's companies were declared bankrupt.In his honor, the Prix Marcel Boussac, a Group One Stakes Race, is run annually at the Longchamp Racecourse.