THE Frenchwoman who had the first face transplant has signed a deal that could make her tens of thousands of pounds from the sale of photographs and a film of the operation.

As the row over the ethics of the transplant escalated, it emerged yesterday that Isabelle Dinoire, 38, had agreed to let the British documentary film-maker Michael Hughes film the graft at Amiens University Hospital in northern France.

The deal was signed by Mr Hughes, the patient and the medical team in August — three months before the operation and before a donor had been found.

The revelation has fuelled concern in France over the transplant. Emmanuel Hirsch, a professor of medical ethics, said: “It is not only the commercial aspect that shocks me. Medical practice demands secrecy and confidentiality. On an ethical level, this is not proper.”

Mme Dinoire told Le Parisien newspaper yesterday that she felt very well, but that she had been upset by the media coverage. “I need to live through these moments serenely,” she said. “I also want my family to be left out of all this.”

Under the deal, which could be worth more than £100,000, Mme Dinoire will keep all the profits from the sale of the photographs and the film after deducting Mr Hughes’s costs and the fees of the agency distributing his work.

“I’m not trying to get rich out of this,” said Mr Hughes, 56, who works for Media-Pro, a film producer in Lyons. “I’m interested in making a film that explains the operation as well as possible. We agreed that all the profits will go to the patient.”

Mme Dinoire, an unemployed divorced mother of two from Valenciennes, northern France, was disfigured in May in an attack at her home by her dog. Her 17-year-old daughter has said that the dog was trying to wake her mother after she took sleeping pills in a suicide attempt. Mme Dinoire confirmed the suicide attempt to a newspaper last weekend.

But this account has been denied by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, head of the department of Transplantation Surgery in Edouard-Herriot Hospital in Lyons, central France, who is overseeing the post-operative treatment. He said that Mme Dinoire had taken a sleeping pill to calm down after a row and was attacked when she woke in the night — perhaps because she had trodden on her dog.

Professor Dubernard is at the centre of the controversy even though the operation was performed by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, head of maxillofacial surgery at Amiens University Hospital.

Critics accuse Professor Dubernard, who is a member of parliament, of using his influence to win approval for the graft, thus ensuring his and Professor Devauchelle’s place in history. Professor Dubernard also had a key role in the contract between the patient and Mr Hughes. Although the document was signed by Professor Devauchelle, it was Professor Dubernard who set it up.

But Professor Hirsch said: “We don’t know the circumstances in which these photographs were negotiated with the patient. As she is of humble origin, could it not be that all this money was a means of putting pressure on her?”

Paris Match publishes today Mr Hughes’s photographs of Mme Dinoire before, during and after the transplant. The French weekly magazine is thought to have paid about £60,000 for the photographs.

Professor Dubernard told Le Monde that the deal with Mr Hughes was to avoid a repeat of his experience after carrying out the first hand transplant in 1998, in which, he said, a press agency tricked him into allowing his patient to be photographed for nothing. He added that his only interest was in improving his patient’s quality of life.