As only the fourth female member of the ICRC's governing body Odier helped to pave the way towards gender equality in the organisation which itself has historically been a pioneer of international humanitarian law.

[1] During the Second World War she became an outspoken advocate inside the ICRC leadership to publicly denounce Nazi Germany's system of extermination and concentration camps.

[4] On the paternal side, Odier hailed from a family of Huguenot background from Pont-en-Royans in the Dauphiné region of southeastern France, which was a center of Protestantism in the 16th century.

When the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which had restored some civil rights to the Huguenots, was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685, some 20,000 Protestants fled from Dauphiné in the following years, amongst them Antoine Odier, Lucie's great-great-great-grandfather.

Lucie's father was Albert Octave Odier (1845-1928), a civil engineer working first at the Western Switzerland railways[1] and then in a leading position at the municipality of Geneva.

[11] She was part of Geneva's patrician class which «turned to banking and philanthropic activities at the end of the 19th century, after losing control of the major public offices».

[5] While Lucie Odier attended Geneva's Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1911,[13] she subsequently followed in that medical tradition and obtained her nursing diploma in 1914[4] from the School of the Samaritans.

She made preparations to do so, but at last the legalist faction of ICRC President Max Huber prevailed and only a «timid and excessively polite» letter was sent to the Italian Red Cross.

[..] Odier courageously questioned several times a line of action which did not seem right to her, especially when legal considerations were overriding general humanitarian concerns.»[19] According to the historian Jean-Claude Favez, Odier was one of the ICRC members who were informed in August / September 1942 by Gerhart Riegner, the Secretary of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, about alarming reports on Nazi Germany's intention to mass murder the European Jews.

[18][28] By autumn of that year, the ICRC leadership received more information about the systematic extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe, the so-called Final Solution.

[2] Subsequently, her standing inside the organisation was diminished: when the executive committee established a department for special assistance to civilian detainees, Odier as well as her fellow experts Ferrière and Frick-Cramer were left out of it.

While the then leadership of the ICRC was later sharply criticized for not publicly denouncing Nazi Germany, Odier all the more made her distinct contribution to what the Nobel Committee credited the ICRC with, i.e.«the great work it has performed during the war on behalf of humanity.»Still in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, Odier went to Northern Italy to provide assistance to hospitals for taking care of returning refugees.

[4] When thousands of former POWs and civilians, who had been taken to Germany as slave labourers, were caught in a sudden cold spell at the Brenner Pass while crossing the alps, Odier managed to organise a convoy with medical help for them.

[15] The International Review of the Red Cross wrote in its obituary:«All who had the privilege of knowing and working with this great lady praised her dedication, perseverance, enthusiasm, unaffected manner and courage, and remember her with affection and gratitude.»[16]On the occasion of the 100th birthday, the Journal de Genève published a tribute to Odier which stressed her «extreme humility».

[31] Odier is buried in Cologny – one of the most affluent municipalities in the Canton of Geneva – where also other former ICRC colleagues like Gustave Ador and Gautier-van Berchem have their graves.

Her gravestone bears a verse from 1 John 2:10:CELUI QUI AIME SON FRÈRE DEMEURE DANS LA LUMIÈRE ("Whoever loves his brother remains in the light")