At an early age her mother gave her up, and she spent much of her childhood in an orphanage in Pétion-Ville, an exclusive suburb in the hills above Port-au-Prince.
The couple was married on 27 December 1939, and had four children: Marie Denise, Nicole, Simone “Queen”, and Jean-Claude, their only son.
She cultivated the image of a benefactor; dispensing charity to inhabitants of "Cite Simone", a planned settlement named for her that is known today as Cité Soleil, one of the most miserable slums in Latin America.
According to a number of her associates, she deeply resented having to relinquish that role after Jean-Claude Duvalier married in 1980 and she was demoted to "Guardian of the Duvalierist Revolution".
[1] When her son was ousted from power in February 1986, Simone Duvalier joined him and his wife, Michèle Bennett, in exile in France.