A great-niece of the French author
Victor Hugo and a niece of the composer
Lucien Laroche, Ostermeyer was born in
Rang-du-Fliers,
Pas-de-Calais. At the insistence of her mother, she began learning piano at the age of 4, and at 14 she left her family's home in Tunisia to attend the
Conservatoire de Paris. She retired from sports in 1950 after having won two bronze medals at that year's European Championships and continued to pursue a career in music. Her athletic prowess damaged her reputation as a concert pianist, however, and she even avoided playing anything composed by
Franz Liszt for six years because she considered him too "sportif". She toured for fifteen years before personal commitments, including the death of her husband, led her to take a teaching job, a post she held until her retirement in the early 1980s. In her final years, she emerged from retirement to give a series of concerts in both France and Switzerland before her death in
Bois-Guillaume. ==References==