Coccinelle was an international celebrity and a renowned club singer, styled as a blonde bombshell sex symbol in the vein of Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot.

She was given the nickname "Coccinelle" (French for "ladybird") after a red party dress with polka dots she wore, which she adopted as her stage name in show business.

Historian Joanne Meyerowitz wrote "the more sexualized MTF showed up in the sensationalized press in the stories on Coccinelle, who worked at Le Carrousel in Paris".

Coccinelle appeared in the 1962 Argentine thriller film Los Viciosos and was the first French trans woman to become a major star, when Bruno Coquatrix splashed her name in red letters on the front of Paris Olympia for her 1963 revue, Cherchez la femme.

In Israeli slang, the word coccinelle (by Hebrew transliteration − קוקסינל, pronounced [koksiˈnel]) is used as a synonym for transgender, often derogatorily (and also as a general slur for a feminine man).

[8] Coccinelle worked extensively as an activist on behalf of transgender people, founding the organization "Devenir Femme" (To Become Woman), which was designed to provide emotional and practical support to those seeking gender reassignment surgery.