Queen of the Night, French artist Rgine lulls into last sleep – a look at her life

Régine Zylberberg, whose club network flourished in the 1980s, died on May 2nd, at the age of 92. Pierre Palmade, a French actor and comedian, confirmed her death on Instagram, however no cause of death was given.

Régine Zylberberg was born in Belgium during the Great Depression. She lived a turbulent childhood, a Jewish kid abandoned by an unmarried mother as a baby and left alone at the age of 12 when her father, a drunkard Polish exile, was apprehended by the Nazis in France. She took refuge in a convent, where she was abused. She sold bras on the streets of Paris after the war.

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In 1957, she borrowed money and started a basement nightclub on a Paris backstreet under the name Chez Régine with a jukebox as she could not afford live music.

Chez Régine has been widely considered the world’s first discotheque since then. Its owner developed a $500 million empire of 23 clubs in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas in the 1970s, including Régine’s in Manhattan, the most famous nightspot of the age, catering to the wealthy elite crowd of celebrities, social figures, princes and playboys.

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She attracted the liberal elite by selling 2,000 $600 club memberships and demanding tuxedos and evening dresses to enter. She put up a flashing “disco full” sign outside to deter passers-by, as well as a sliding-back peephole at the door.

Régine’s expansion reached an amazing height in the late 1970s. She had clubs in Monte Carlo, Rio de Janeiro, So Paulo, Saint Tropez, London, Düsseldorf, Los Angeles, Miami, Cairo, and Kuala Lumpur, among many other places, in addition to her flagships in Paris and New York. All of them were in outstanding locations. Her market research included a list of each city’s elite, who would be groomed as club patrons and investors.

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She ran restaurants, cafes, and a magazine, as well as selling clothing and perfumes and sponsoring dance classes and cruises.

She also had minor roles in films such as ‘The Seven-Percent Solution’ (1976), a Sherlock Holmes mystery starring Nicol Williamson and Laurence Olivier.  In 1978, she scored a hit with a French version of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive,’ and she had her Carnegie Hall debut in 1970.

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In the 1980s, Régine’s popularity in New York and around the world waned as it was surpassed by trendy clubs such as Studio 54, and the Manhattan disco created in 1977 by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager.

She married Leon Rothcage when she was 16 years old. Lionel Rotcage was their kid, and they split after a few years. Roger Choukroun, who assisted her in managing her estates, married her in 1969. In 2004, they divorced. In 2006, her son passed away.