Background
Henri De Monfreid was born November 14, 1879 La Franqui, Languedoc-Roussillon, France. He was the son of artist painter Georges-Daniel de Monfreid.
Henry de Monfreid at his Paris home published in the New York Times, 1930s
adventurer Photographer author
Henri De Monfreid was born November 14, 1879 La Franqui, Languedoc-Roussillon, France. He was the son of artist painter Georges-Daniel de Monfreid.
Henri De Monfreid studied in Paris.
Unable to settle down as a businessman, Henri De Monfreid made his first trip to the Red Sea coast in 1911. He left France again in 1917 for a permanent vocation as an arms trader and pearl diver in and around the Red Sea, settling first in Djibouti with his wife and children.
In later years Henri De Monfreid was exiled from Ethiopia because of his writings, but he returned in 1936 as a war correspondent. Arrested by the British Army in 1940 and sent to Kenya, he stayed there as a farmer until 1948, when he returned to France. At the age of seventy-nine he sailed his boat from Reunion Island to Mauritius, disappearing for two weeks along the way.
(French Edition)