[3] A 2010 Marianne news magazine poll named her France's "most influential intellectual", primarily on the basis of her books on women's rights and motherhood.
[4] Badinter is the largest shareholder of Publicis Groupe, a multinational advertising and public relations company, and the chairwoman of its supervisory board.
During adolescence, Badinter read Simone de Beauvoir's the Second Sex, which profoundly influenced her views, inspiring her pursuit of a doctorate in philosophy at Sorbonne University.
[11] Her first book titled, L'Amour en plus, was published in 1980 and raises the question of whether maternal love is an exclusively natural instinct or a tendency reinforced in the cultural context, in which the behaviour of motherly affection is expected.
"[2] During the 1989 Islamic scarf controversy in France, Badinter, Régis Debray, Alain Finkielkraut, Élisabeth de Fontenay, and Catherine Kintzler wrote an open letter to the then Minister of Education, Lionel Jospin, demanding that students who refuse to take off their headscarves not be allowed to attend state schools.