Credited with opening the first disco, she built an empire of glittering playgrounds for the Beautiful People in Paris, New York and beyond.
She was born Rachelle Zylberberg in Belgium as the Great Depression struck: a Jewish child abandoned in infancy by her unwed mother and left alone at 12 when her father, a drunken Polish refugee, was arrested by the Nazis in France. She hid in a convent, where she was beaten. After the war, she sold bras in the streets of Paris and vowed to become rich and famous someday.
In 1957, calling herself Régine, she borrowed money and opened a basement nightclub in a Paris backstreet. She could
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