Edmonde Charles-Roux: Journalist who worked for Elle and Vogue before becoming an award-winning novelist

Charles-Roux won the Prix Goncourt for her novel Oublier Palerme which was adapted for the cinema by Francesco Rosi

Charles-Roux with President Hollande during a ceremony at the Elysée Palace in Paris in 2014 (EPA)

Edmonde Charles-Roux, who has died at the age of 95, was a French writer who was one of the founding editors of Elle magazine and a long-time editor of Vogue. She won the Prix Goncourt for her novel Oublier Palerme ("To Forget Palermo"), which was adapted for the cinema by Francesco Rosi as Dimenticare Palermo in 1990.

The daughter of a diplomat who was also the last chairman of the Suez Canal Company, she spent most of her childhood outside France. When the Second World War broke out in 1939 she worked as a volunteer nurse, at first in a French Foreign Legion unit; she was wounded at Verdun while rescuing a legionnaire. She then joined the Resistance.

At the war's end, she worked for two years for the newly founded Elle, where she boldly combined ready-to-wear clothes and Pop Art. She became chief editor of Vogue in 1948 and remained until 1966, when she was forced out by the management because she wanted to put a black woman on the cover.

Her first novel was published that year to general acclaim. She married the Socialist politician Gaston Deferre, who died in 1986.

She went on to write biographies as well as fiction, before becoming first a member of the Academie Goncourt and then its president. She is also celebrated for her photojournalistic books on the lives of her husband, who died in 1986 (L'Homme de Marseille, 2001), and Coco Chanel (Chanel Time, 2004). She wrote the books of several of Roland Petit ballets, including Le Guépard and Nana.

Edmonde Charles-Roux, journalist and author: born Neuilly-sur-Seine 17 April 1920; Croix de Guerre; Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur 1945; married Gaston Deferre (died 1986); died Marseille 20 January 2016.