Stéphanie Villedrouin


Stéphanie Balmir Villedrouin is a former Haitian government minister of tourism.

Early years

Villedrouin comes from a prominent Haitian family; the seventh child of Alix Balmir, a diplomat, and his wife, Gladys Dubousquet, a native of the city of Gonaïves, Haiti; both of her parents are light-skinned mulattoes. She was born abroad in Caracas while her father was serving in diplomatic relations as the Ambassador of Haiti in Venezuela. Two months later her father was designated to the Haitian Embassy in Colombia, wherein Villedrouin spent her early childhood. After the fall of the Jean-Claude Duvalier’s regime, in 1986, the whole family returned to Haiti and established restaurants and hotels.
Villedrouin was four years old when her family returned to Haiti, where she completed her schooling in Port-au-Prince. Then, she studied hospitality and tourism management at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, in Santiago, Dominican Republic; she managed a hotel in Kenscoff, a mountainous hamlet located 10 kilometres to the southeast of Port-au-Prince. She is fluent in French and Haitian Creole, as well as in Spanish and English.

Minister of Tourism

She is since 20 October 2011 the Minister of Tourism of Haiti. On 2 April 2014, in a Presidential reform to the Council of Ministers, wherein only 7 out of 24 ministers remained, she was reconfirmed as minister of Tourism and Creative Industries.
During her tenure as minister, Haiti inaugurated its first Tourism Promotion Office.

Personal life

In 2003, she married Marcel Bernard Villedrouin and they have three children together.