Marie-Cécile Zinsou

Her father is Lionel Zinsou, an economist, who after years working in France returned to Benin, where he became Prime Minister from June 2015 to April 2016, being beaten in the second round as presidential candidate in the 2016 election.

She is also the grand-niece of Émile Derlin Zinsou, former president of Dahomey (now Benin), and of the prominent Beninese cardinal Bernardin Gantin.

[1] In 2005, she launched CSEB, a business services company in Benin,[4] and in June that same year with funding from her family was involved with setting up and running the Fondation Zinsou, based in Cotonou,[7][8] as an art centre with on-site or travelling exhibitions, publishing books, and also providing libraries and training.

[12] In 2020, Zinsou was a member of the jury that selected Kapwani Kiwanga as winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize.

In 2014, the Fondation Zinsou was awarded a young artists grant from the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale.