Katoucha Niane: The Times obituary

The Paris fashion world is mourning Katoucha Niane, one of the first black supermodels, after her body was found floating in the River Seine, a month since her disapperance from her houseboat.

There was no sign of foul play and Niane, 47, who was the face of Yves Saint Laurent in the late 1980s, appeared to have drowned accidentally as she returned home from a party early on February 1, police said. The Guinea-born model once known as the African Pearl died "due to rapid submersion without any trace of violence", according to the post-mortem examination..

A pedestrian spotted the body at lunchtime on Thursday under the Pont du Garigliano in western Paris, not far from the houseboat by the Pont Alexandre III where Niane had lived for the past five years.

The identification of the model who became a campaigner against female excision ended a search that began four days after friends reported her missing. She had been driven home by friends in the early hours of the morning after a party. Her handbag was found in front of her closed front door on the boat at the start of the search. Police were investigating the possibility of murder or suicide.

Friends had ruled out suicide, saying that Niane, a mother of three, had been leading a happy and fulfilled life after publishing an "expiatory autobiography" last year, called In my Flesh. Police said that it appeared that her death was accidental, but they were continuing to investigate.

Katoucha, as she is known in the fashion world, was the daughter of Djibril Tamsir Niane, a Guinean writer and historian. She earned fame as a model for Thierry Mugler, Paco Rabanne and Christian Lacroix before Yves Saint Laurent turned her into a globally recognised face.

She gave up modelling in 1995 to concentrate on her own design label and her campaign against female genital mutilation in her native West Africa. She ascribed her ambition to the trauma that she suffered at the age of 9 when she underwent the operation on what her mother had told her would be an outing to the cinema. She saw her modelling career as revenge for the horror of excision, she wrote in her book. "I embodied the most arrogant and admired kind of femininity, I who was supposed to be diminished," she said.

Excision, she said, was an "act of gratuitous hatred". "I am persuaded that this blow to my dignity and my body was the founding element of a fracture in me that turned into a ravine."

Retired from modelling since an appearance at the 1998 football World Cup ceremonies, she remained close to Saint Laurent. "He loved her enormously," said Dominique Deroche, spokesman for the fashion house. "She was exactly like an Yves Saint Laurent drawing, a proud head on a long neck, very slim but with strong shoulders, made for haute couture. She looked magnificent on the catwalk and often wore very powerful outfits like a Cubist navy-blue dress with doves around the neckline."

Times Recommends

• Violent video games won’t corrupt
• Pope Benedict XVI: Alma Mater
• Chávez should know what’s good for him