Bernard-Henri Lévy: We’ve entered a new world war

Part of BHL’s enduring fame and appeal stems from his movie star looks, his movie star wife (the actress Arielle Dombasle), his celebrity friends and the great fortune he inherited from his father.

Knowing full well I am committing the ultimate faux pas, I ask him directly how much he’s worth. For the only time in our conversation, he is stunned speechless. In stark contrast to North America and much of Asia, nobody in Western Europe, and especially France, talks about or shows off how much money they have.

Undeterred, I tell him I found a public estimate that he was worth €150 million back in 2006. He says he never comments on his personal wealth. A friend who knows him well tells me he is probably now worth around €200 million.

The money came from his father, a World War II hero from a poor French family in Algeria. BHL was born in Algeria, making him what the French call a pied noir.

When we speak about his father, BHL’s entire demeanor changes. Gone are the gesticulations. He speaks in a quiet, reverent voice as he tells me how his father built one of the two biggest timber companies in France from scratch. The other one was owned by the billionaire François Pinault, who now owns Gucci, YSL, Balenciaga, Christie’s auction house and many other trophy assets. When Lévy senior died in the mid-1990s, Pinault bought the timber company, providing BHL and his siblings with their fortune and becoming in the process a “good-willing godfather” to the philosopher.

BHL is also reticent when I ask him about his marriage of more than three decades. In past years, tabloid papers have been filled with titillating stories of BHL’s affair with Daphne Guinness — an heiress to the Guinness beer fortune and granddaughter to the infamous Diana Mitford, who married the English fascist Oswald Mosley.