Amélie Mauresmo was born on 5 July 1979 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, just north-west of Paris. She was not yet four when she watched Yannick Noah win the 1983 French Open on television, and it made her want to play. In 1996 she won the junior titles at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, and in 1998 Noah, by then France's captain, picked her for the Fed Cup team.
In 1999 she saved a match point in the first round of the Australian Open and went on to the final, beating three seeded players before losing to Martina Hingis; she was only the second Frenchwoman, after Mary Pierce, to reach that final. A right-hander with a dazzling one-handed backhand, she finished the 2002, 2003 and 2004 seasons among the world's top four, became world No. 1 in September 2004, led France to the 2003 Fed Cup title, winning all eight of her singles matches, and won the Olympic silver medal in Athens in 2004.
For a long time she was described as a player who could not win the biggest titles. That changed at the end of 2005, when she beat Mary Pierce to win the season-ending WTA Championships. In 2006 she won the Australian Open, when Justine Henin retired from the final while Mauresmo led 6–1, 2–0, and then beat Henin again in the Wimbledon final to become the first Frenchwoman in 81 years to win the title.
She won 25 singles titles, retired on 3 December 2009 and stayed in the game. She coached players including Andy Murray, who won seven titles in their two years together, captained France's Fed Cup team from 2013, taking it to the final in 2016, and was named tournament director of Roland Garros, the first woman in the role, taking charge from the 2022 edition.