Mireille Mathieu (French pronunciation: [miʁɛj matjø] ^ⓘ; born 22 July 1946) is a French singer. She has recorded over 1,200 songs in eleven languages, with more than 122 million records sold worldwide.

Mireille Mathieu was born on 22 July 1946, in Avignon, France, as the eldest daughter in a family of fourteen children; the youngest brother was born after she moved to Paris. Her father, Roger, and his family were natives of Avignon, while her mother, Marcelle-Sophie (née Poirier), was from Dunkirk. Marcelle arrived in Avignon in 1944 as a refugee from World War II after her grandmother had died and her mother went missing. Roger, along with his father, Arcade, ran the family stonemason shop just outside the main gate of Saint-Véran cemetery [fr]. The Mathieu family has been stonemasons for four generations. Today, the shop is named Pompes Funèbres Mathieu-Mardoyan, owned and managed by her sister Réjane's family.

The Mathieu family lived in poverty, but their living conditions improved significantly in 1954, when subsidized housing was built in the Malpeigné neighborhood near the cemetery. Then, in 1961, they moved to a larger tenement in the Croix des Oiseaux  [fr] neighborhood southeast of the city.

Roger had once dreamed of becoming a singer, but his father, Arcade, disapproved, which inspired him to encourage one of his children to learn to sing with him in church. Mathieu included her father's operatic voice on her 1968 Christmas album, where it was mixed into the Minuit Chrétiens song. Mathieu's first paid performance before an audience, at age four, was rewarded with a lollipop when she sang during Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve 1950. A defining moment for her was seeing Édith Piaf sing on television.

Mathieu performed poorly in elementary school due to dyslexia, requiring an additional year to graduate. She was born left-handed, and her teachers would strike her hand with a ruler each time she was caught writing with it. She eventually became right-handed, although her left hand remains quite animated when she sings. She has an excellent memory and never uses a prompter on stage. Abandoning higher education at age 14 (1961), after moving to Croix des Oiseaux, she began working in a local factory in Montfavet (a suburb southeast of town), contributing to the family income and paying for her singing lessons. Popular at work, she often sang during lunch or while working. Like her parents, she is short in stature, standing at 1.52 m (5 feet) tall. Her sister Monique, born on 8 July 1947, began working at the same factory a few months later. Both sisters received bicycles on credit to commute, resulting in long days and difficult memories of riding against the mistral winds. When the factory closed, Mathieu and her two sisters (Monique and Christiane) became youth counselors at a summer camp before her rise to fame. During that summer, she had her fortune told by Tarot cards by an elderly Gypsy woman, who predicted that she would soon mingle with kings and queens.

Mathieu is Roman Catholic, and her adopted patron saint is Saint Rita, the "Saint for the Impossible". Mathieu's paternal grandmother, Germaine née Charreton, assured her that Saint Rita was the one to intercede with God for hopeless cases. Beyond religion, like many artists she holds superstitions and beliefs about luck. When asked to reveal some of her superstitions, she said: "The most important one is to never mention any of them." She has stage fright and is often seen making the sign of the cross before stepping on stage.

Mathieu began her career by participating in an annual singing contest in Avignon called On Chante dans mon Quartier ("We Sing in My Neighborhood"). Photos depict the event as rather modest, with a simple curtain and one projector light. The stage was only twenty feet square, and the singer had to share it with a large piano and musicians. A large, boisterous, and mostly young audience was very much in evidence. The judges sat at a table in front of and below the elevated stage. Anyone who signed the contract in the weeks leading up to the show was allowed to perform. Talent scouts made this a worthwhile event for singers from hundreds of miles around.

Mathieu received private singing lessons from Madame Laure Collière, who was also a piano teacher in Avignon. Self-described as very stubborn in her autobiography, she wrote about singing love songs that the audience deemed inappropriate for a young girl. As a result, she lost in 1962 when she sang "Les Cloches de Lisbonne" at the first contest, and lost again in 1963 when she sang Édith Piaf's "L'Hymne à l'amour". However, in 1964, she won the event with another Piaf song, "La Vie en rose".