Eugénie Luce

Eugénie Allix Luce (1804-1882) was a French educator, who founded the first French/Arab school for Muslim girls, the Luce Ben Aben School in Algiers, Algeria, in 1845.

[2] It was the first Franco-Arab school for Muslim girls,[3] offering a European-style education.

Girls learned French, Arabic, arithmetic, embroidery, geography, and sewing.

[2] The school was forced to close on 1 January 1846 because of a lack of financial support from the local French government.

To seek funding, Luce sold her possessions and traveled to Paris to ask for help from the central government.

Luce Ben Aben School of Arab Embroidery I, Algiers, Algeria, 1899, seventeen years after the death of Eugénie Luce