Catherine Ringer, the singer of the French rock duo Rita Mitsouko, has died at the age of 68, her family announced to the news agency AFP.
The family said in a statement that it was with immense sadness that they announced her death, saying she had been taken by a fulminant cancer during the night of 14 September 2026.
The family described Ringer as a major French artist and half of Rita Mitsouko, saying she had marked several generations with her voice and songs, her great freedom and her singularity.
A defining voice of French rock
Ringer founded Rita Mitsouko in the early 1980s with guitarist Fred Chichin, her partner, who died in 2007. Together they built one of the most explosive bands in French rock.
Their hits spanned decades, including "Andy," "C'est comme ça" and "Les histoires d'amour finissent mal." Their best known song remained "Marcia Baïla," released in 1984, a heartrending anthem written about the death of the Argentine dancer Marcia Moretto, who died of cancer.
Early life and meeting Fred Chichin
Ringer was born on 18 October 1957 in the Paris suburbs. Her father was a painter and a former Jewish deportee, and her mother was an architect. She left school at 15 and moved through a series of artistic pursuits, including a period working in pornography, a past she never disowned.
She met Chichin in 1979. He went on to become her soulmate and creative partner within Rita Mitsouko for several decades.
Life after Fred Chichin
Chichin died of a fulminant cancer at the age of 53. Ringer initially stepped away from the stage after his death before gradually returning to it, continuing to carry on the legacy of Rita Mitsouko.
In 2019, she marked the 40th anniversary of meeting Chichin with a performance at the Philharmonie de Paris. More recently she had also taken to reciting poetry on stage. In 2023, she told AFP she had always loved the rhythm of words, and said she liked to improvise in rhymes, even in the middle of a concert.
