Edith Piaf (Edith Gassion), who grew up in a circus and began singing in 1931, was a street singer who went on to become an icon of Paris, the living symbol of the artistic scene of the 1940s and of the moral revolution of the post-war era. She was the quintessential singer of lost love, but frequently set it against a decadent backdrop of of sex, death and drugs. Her first single was Les Momes de la Cloche (1936) and and the following four years made her a star. Credit goes largely to her manager Raymond Asso and to composer Marguerite Monnot, who wrote the music for Mon Legionnaire (1937), Un Jeune Homme Chantait (1937), Elle Frequentait la Rue Pigalle (1939), Paris-Mediterranee (1938), C'est Lui Que Mon Cour a Choisi (1938), Le Grand Voyage Du Pauvre Negre (1940), followed by Michel Emer's L'Accordeoniste (1940), another massive hit.

She was famous both for her melodramatic style of singing and for the famous lovers she took. Her lovers provided quite a bit of her material, but she wrote her romantic anthem La Vie en Rose (1946). Other hits included Les Trois Cloches (1946), L'Hymne A l'Amour (1950), Gilbert Becaud's Je T'Ai Dans la Peau (1952) Monnot's La Goulante de Pauvre Jean (1954), La Foule (1957), Norbert Glanzberg's Mon Manege a Moi (1958), Monnot's Milord (1959), her greatest hit outside France, Charles Domont's Non Je Ne Regrette Rien (1960), and Aznavour's Plus Bleu Que Tes Yeux. She probably reached the apex of her vocal skills in the early 1950s, but then had to withdraw from the limelight to heal her alcohol and drug addictions. She returned with Les Amants d'un Jour (1956) and triumphal shows, but she died in 1963, at the age of 48.

Marguerite Monnot cmposed the musical Irma La Douce (1956).