Barbara became a famous cabaretière in the late 1950s in Paris, known as La Chanteuse de minuit ('the midnight singer'), before she started composing her own tracks, which brought her to fame.

She said in her uncompleted autobiography, Il était un piano noir (assembled from notes found after her death), that her father sexually abused her when she was 10 and she hated him for that.

Her painter and writer friends took over an old house, converting it into workshops and a concert hall with a piano where she performed the songs of Édith Piaf, Juliette Gréco and Germaine Montero.

Dressed in a long black robe, she gave a haunting performance, but the Parisian critics said she lacked naturalness and was stiff and formal in her presentation.

She continued to perform at small clubs, and two years later at the Théâtre des Capucines she succeeded with the audience and critics alike, singing new material she had written herself.

Influenced originally by songwriters Mireille and Pierre MacOrlan, she developed her own style and the writing of her own songs transformed her image into that of a unique singer-songwriter.

In the 1960s, she wrote her landmark song, "Ma plus belle histoire d'amour c'est vous" ("My Most Beautiful Love Story Is You"), and others for which she remains famous such as "L'aigle noir", "Nantes", "La solitude", "Göttingen" and "Une petite cantate."

[4] In 1969, Moustaki [citation needed] wrote the theme song "Moi, je me balance" for the film La fiancée du pirate that Barbara sings.

[citation needed] In the 1970s, Barbara made appearances on television variety shows with stars such as Johnny Hallyday and a tour of Japan, Canada, Belgium, Israel, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

However, she recorded another successful album in 1996—which sold over a million copies in twelve hours—before she died of respiratory problems in Neuilly-sur-Seine (a suburb of Paris), on 24 November 1997.

She wrote many very personal songs, including "Nantes" about her father and "Une petite cantate", which was dedicated to her friend Liliane Benelli [fr], who had died in a car accident earlier in 1965.

One of the few English-speaking artists to cover her work is Marc Almond, whose version of "Amours Incestueuses" ("Incestuous Loves") was released on his 1993 album "Absinthe".

The Anglo-French biographer David Bret, a close friend of Barbara, wrote at her behest "Les Hommes Bafoués", a song about AIDS prejudice.

[citation needed] In 1971, the Spanish singer Maria del Mar Bonet recorded a cover of L'Aigle Noir in Catalan which was a success in Spanish-language countries.

Well-known contemporary artists such as New York-based Martha Wainwright and Spanish singer-songwriter Conchita Mendivil (who both recently reprised "Dis, Quand Reviendras-tu?