Widow bequeaths hotel to life's most wretched

For almost a century, the Hotel Negresco in Nice has been the holiday destination of choice for film stars, millionaires, royalty and Soviet commissars. How many hotels can boast a metal chandelier designed by Gustav Eiffel? Or mink bedspreads in every room?

The octogenarian owner of the palatial hotel, classified as a historic monument by the French state, has just rewritten her will. On her death, the title deeds will be handed over to a charity which rescues homeless people and unwanted animals.

The Hotel Negresco, the 96-year-old queen of the Promenade des Anglais, is not going to become an animal shelter. However, the ownership, and the profits of the hotel, have been bequeathed to a new foundation which is devoted to animals and the poor, created by the Negresco's owner, Jeanne Augier.

Her motives are three-fold: To help the wretched, both man and beast; to keep together the staff of the last privately owned luxury hotel in France; and to prevent the much sought-after Negresco from falling into the hands of an international hotel chain.

"I want to be sure, when I go, that my 260 colleagues are not sacrificed on the altar of profit," she said.

"It is my house and the staff are my children. I have received dozens of offers from international hotel groups. Some of them were very attractive indeed. But I was not tempted ... I want this hotel to keep its soul and remain French-owned."

Augier, a childless widow, has also bequeathed the rest of her property portfolio in Paris, Nice and Grasse - said to be worth more than €100 million ($216 million) - to the Mesange-Augier-Negresco foundation.

One of the charity's missions will be to campaign for animal rights and, in particular, to attack what Augier calls the "barbarous" practice of bull-fighting. There may seem to be a contradiction between animal rights and mink bedspreads, but the luxury hotel business is the luxury hotel business and fur is not shunned in France.

Augier, a tiny woman with a will of iron who lives in the top storey of the hotel, has talked of creating a foundation since the death of her lawyer husband, Paul Augier, in 1995. Now the papers are signed, she said, she will be able to "die with a light heart".

- INDEPENDENT