Fernande Barrey was born in Paris on January 9th, 1893. Her family was from Saint-Valery sur Somme, in the North of France. The period when she would have posed for Jean Agelou, if she did so, does not appear in her life history.

By 1916 she lived in Montparnasse, in a small flat at rue Delambre, 5, and she regularly took her coffee at the Dome, a famous painters' café. There she met some of the painters of the Ecole de Paris, among those were Amedeo Modigliani and Chaïm Soutine. They liked the sketches she drew of them and convinced her to study painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

In the same café, 1917, she also met Tsuguharu Foujita. She was 25, with laughing eyes, short hair, a turned-up nose, and slangy Parisian speech, her accent being Picardy. For Foujita, it was love at first sight, but she was not impressed by the unusual Japanese man with earrings and strange clothing. He rose and approached her, bowed ceremoniously. They exchanged a few words, he paid her compliments about her dress. He then retreated.

Foujita had a gift of making dresses from nothing. He spent that night sewing a blue blouse for Fernande and brought it to her room in the morning. Foujita complained of the coldness of Fernande's room and as she did not want to appear lacking in generosity herself, after Foujita's wonderful handmade gift, Fernande picked up a hatchet and hacked up the only chair she owned to provide him with some firewood.

They married several days later, on March, 27th, 1917 at the town hall of the 14th Arrondissement. Foujita borrowed the 6 francs needed to publish the wedding banns from a waiter at the Rotonde, whom he reimbursed by painting a portrait of his wife.

Fernande gave up her own artistic activities to devote herself to her husband's career. A few weeks after their marriage, story has it that she left home with a portfolio of drawings under her arm. She walked to the right bank, where most of the art dealers operated. Caught in an unexpected downpour, she went into Cheron's, a very well-known art dealer, offering him two watercolors in exchange for an umbrella. She returned to Montparnasse without having sold a thing. But she had won over Cheron. For after he had studied the watercolors attentively, the dealer crossed the Seine to the rue Delambre. He asked who this artist was and where he kept his works. He bought everything he saw, providing some welcome security for the young couple: seven francs fifty for each watercolor, as a minimum, and four hundred fifty francs for a month's production. To celebrate their good fortune, Foujita gave his wife a cage and a canary.

The Foujita couple were friends with most Montparnasse painters, including the Russian painter, Ossip Zadkine and his lover Valentine Prax. Foujita made a coat of deep blue cloth for Valentine, while Fernande taught her how to make up, which Zadkine didn't like much. The following summer, Zadkine left for Bruniquel, a small village in the South-West of France. The Foujitas invited Valentine to spend the summer with them in Collioure, on the Mediterranean sea. There a telegram came from Bruniquel: "Come.. let's speak about marriage.." Valentine hurried to join Zadkine. They married on August 14th, 1920 and the Foujitas were both witnesses.

They also were close with Amedeo Modigliani and his lover, Jeanne Hébuterne. Fernande said she introduced Modigliani to his dealer and friend, Zborowski, but this has not been confirmed. In the summer of 1918 the Foujitas went with Soutine, Modigliani and the Zborowskis to the Riviera where the painters intended, but without success, to find rich buyers. Fernande had then taken the habit of walking nude in the country.

In Nice Jeanne gave birth to Modigliani's daughter, another Jeanne. When they moved, their landlord took hold of the painters'luggage in lieu of payment, but he wasn't interested in their paintings. Some years later he could have been a millionaire with the works of Modigliani, Soutine and Foujita. Fernande also possessed drawings from Modigliani but used them to light fire! They hadn't any value at that time. When Modigliani died at the young age of 35 from tuberculosis, the Foujitas tried vainly to console Jeanne but couldn't prevent her from committing suicide. Many years later, Fernande remembered these terrible moments with sobs in her voice: "she was a real beauty with her blond braids, an angel!"

Foujita, fully devoted to his art, began to recklessly neglect Fernande and she got bored. She took up painting again, exhibiting three paintings at the Autumn Salon in 1920 : "Child with white scarf", "Little girl with doll" and "Blond girl".

The couple took part in many wild parties organized by their artist friends, the most known of them being the "Bal de l'AAAA (Aide Amicale Aux Artistes)" (Friendly Help to Artists). Foujita dressed in a loincloth and tattooed his whole body blue. He carried on his back, a big wicker cage, in which was Fernande, tied up like a bundle and wearing nothing, not even a loincloth. On the cage was a notice reading "woman for sale". She was a very beautiful woman and everybody wanted to have a look between the bars. Some offers were even made, but amateurs were intimidated when it became known that this slave girl was in fact a painter who had already exhibited at the Salon.

Fernande may not have been for sale, but she willingly gave herself for free. She spent more and more time at the Dome seeking distraction. She took lovers, and met another Japanese painter, Koyanagi, who happened to be a cousin of her husband. She used to join him in the afternoon at his workshop rue Schoelcher, while Foujita painted cats. When she finally confessed this affair to her husband, he smiled calmly but Fernande knew him better than that. He had known about her lovers, but this time he was very angry because his rival was a man of his own race, and a member of his own family!

When his anger finally calmed, Foujita let Fernande go with her new samourai. At the same time he himself met his new love, Lucie Badoul. He met her at the Rotonde; another famous bar, and immediately they spent three days in a hotel bedroom getting acquainted, while Fernande was looking everywhere for her husband, even at the morgue. Foujita left Fernande to live with his new love, who he called Youki (she was later the wife of the surrealist poet Robert Desnos). Fernande and Foujita were divorced in 1928.

Fernande settled with Koyanagi and kept painting. They took part in the Autumn Salon of 1923. In Feb. 1929 "Paris Montparnasse" Magazine announced their future marriage with wedding dinner at the Coupole with Kiki of Montparnasse as bridesmaid. But this marriage appears to never have happened.

Later she left Koyanagi but stayed in Montparnasse in her old flat rue Delambre, as a painter. She was still living there by 1960 when she was interviewed for a book about the painters she knew "Montparnasse Alive" by J-P. Crespelle. She was, by then, an older woman and one of the most popular characters of Montparnasse, receiving respects from young painters when she dined at the Coupole. She painted slowly, staying sometimes on a painting for months and preferring to live modestly rather than make commercial productions.

Foujita never abandoned Fernande and helped her make ends meet in remembrance of her help at the beginning of his career. She never remarried, and was proud to have been Tsuguharu Foujita's wife.