Maîtresse Françoise (pen name Annick Foucault) is a publicly known dominatrix in Paris, France. Her autobiography was published in France by publisher Éditions Gallimard.
Annick Foucault was born in the South of France.[1][2] Her childhood was marred by the loss of her father.[1][2] After having been the victim of an accident, she consecutively had no real other alternative but dropping out of university.[3] Thus she chiefly became a self-taught woman.[4] She first ran a ready-to-wear shop[3] and then became interested in Minitel,[5] which she considered to be “an excellent means of communication, a kind of no-man’s-land where anything is allowed”.[6] She subsequently participated in various forums and set up a “debate forum”, 3615 Fetish[citation needed], which was devoted to sadomasochism, before launching in 1994 her own specialized “minitel network”, under the name of Miss M.[3] Marc Daum described her as “a major messaging authorizing officer 3615 on behalf of a foremost player in telematics, given that the good intellectual performance of her forums [had built] the loyalty of her knowledgeable readers”.[7] During the same period, she was the chief editor of a magazine—La Scène—with a circulation of 5,000 copies.[8] In October 1996, she provided a “precious collaboration” to the journalist Monique Ayoun by the time she was writing an article dedicated to Minitel on behalf of the newspaper Biba [fr].[9]