French artist Niki de Saint Phalle was born Catherine-Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. In 1933 she moved with her family to the United States. Saint Phalle worked as a model and actress before beginning to paint in the early 1950s. Saint Phalle travelled and lived in Europe before returning to the US to settle in California in 1994. In 2000, she was made an Honorary Citizen of Hannover, Germany, and donated 300 pieces of her work to the Sprengel Museum.