A Weekly Podcast
ONE ON ONE

A true “citizen of the world”, Youmna’s life journey began in Lebanon. When she was just a few months old, the family left for Ghana, then Tunisia, Switzerland where she studied for 9 years, back to Beirut and finally to England as a young bride in 1978, just months after she and Tony had married in Beirut. As the Lebanese “Civil War” kept them apart frequently, she got busy raising their children, eventually skirting the business world as a successful ice cream dessert maker to London’s most demanding “conoscentis”.

However, her first love being painting, she soon veered back to blending watercolours and made a name for herself and her still lives by exhibiting in London and painting commissions for several private clients . During that time, Youmna archived her father’s private papers, publishing in 2005 excerpts of them in a ground-breaking book on Middle East intelligence after WWII. She also started the first chapter of the English Speaking Union in Lebanon; her programs were so creative (working with the Shakespeare Globe for instance) that she was elected President of the International Council of the ESU in 2003.

In 2006, as life has it, destiny offered her and Tony the choice of becoming “accidental winemakers” and owners of a most unique property in Bordeaux: Chateau Biac. Nowadays, Youmna can be seen around the vineyard , applying her art where design is needed and feeding souls and stomachs with her legendary harvest lunches…