Halard-Decugis lived in
La Baule, France, during the initial stages of her career and later moved to
Pully, Switzerland. She turned professional in 1986. She won the
French Open junior singles title in 1988 and was the
Wimbledon junior singles runner-up in 1987. She retired from the
WTA Tour tennis circuit at the end of the 2000 season. Her highest WTA Tour singles and doubles rankings was number seven and number one respectively. She had been coached by Arnaud Decugis since 1989. Halard-Decugis won her first WTA Tour singles title in Puerto Rico. She enjoyed her best season in 1996, when she won her first WTA Tour Tier II singles title in Paris and finished the year with a career-high season-ending singles ranking of No. 15 and as the No. 1 singles player from France. This occurred despite the fact that her playing schedule in the second half of 1996 was curtailed because of a wrist injury sustained during the
Fed Cup semifinal match against Spain. She only played two tournaments in late 1997 because of injuries. By winning the singles title in
Rosmalen in 1998, she became the 20th player to have won singles titles on all four surfaces in the Open Era. Halard also won the singles and doubles titles in
Pattaya that year, and broke into the top 10 singles ranking in August 1999, becoming the fifth Frenchwoman after
Françoise Dürr,
Mary Pierce,
Nathalie Tauziat and
Amélie Mauresmo to do so. In 1999, she won WTA Tour singles titles in
Auckland and
Birmingham and was runner-up on three other occasions. Between 15 November 1999 and 9 January 2000,
Julie Halard, Nathalie Tauziat, Amélie Mauresmo and Mary Pierce were all ranked inside the singles top 10, the first time France had four players ranked among the singles top 10. 2000 was to be the final and perhaps the finest year of Halard's professional playing career. She reached the
Australian Open singles quarterfinal for the second time, captured the second WTA Tour Tier II title of her career in
Eastbourne and reached her career-high singles ranking of No. 7 in February. Halard was also runner-up in Tokyo's Princess Cup in October and won the doubles title with
Ai Sugiyama. The following week, she won both the singles and doubles titles at the Japan Open in Tokyo, saving three match points in the final to defeat the defending champion
Amy Frazier. On her 30th birthday, Halard won the
2000 US Open women's doubles title with Ai Sugiyama, her only
Grand Slam title as a professional. The pair also reached the final at
Wimbledon, the semifinal at the
French Open and the quarterfinal at the
Australian Open that year. Halard-Decugis won nine other doubles titles in 2000, five of them with Sugiyama, and became the first Frenchwoman to attain the No. 1 doubles ranking in the Open Era. Halard-Decugis represented her country in the Federation Cup Fed Cup from 1990 to 2000 and in the
Olympic Games in 1992 and 2000. ==Personal life==