Niki de Saint Phalle - A Life Forged in Fire Niki de Saint Phalle was born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle on October 29, 1930, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Her father, André Marie de Saint Phalle, whose banking company went bankrupt during the Wall Street Crash of 1929, came from an old noble family from France. Her mother, Jeanne-Jacqueline Harper, a woman from the American upper middle class, suffered from depression due to her husband’s infidelities. As her mother left to join her husband in the United States, she spent her early years with her paternal grandparents in France…