Born Jeanne Adèle Levylier in Paris in 1899, her parents were from a Jewish family of high-rank civil servants.

[2] After a divorce, in 1933 she married industrialist Henri Reichenbach, one of the founders of the “Prisunic” retail store chain, but their marriage ended with his suicide in 1940.

She became his mistress, and after Blum's imprisonment during the war, the Vichy government authorised her to join him in Buchenwald in 1943 where, having favoured conditions of detention, they were allowed to be married.

In 1974 she created in Jouy-en-Josas a special school named after her, the "École de puériculture Jeanne-Blum".

She died at home in 1982, from an overdose of medication, thirty-two years after the death of her husband.