Dominique Lapierre was born in Châtelaillon-Plage, Charente-Maritime, France.
* At the age of thirteen, he travelled to the U.S. with his father who was a diplomat (Consul General of France). He attended the Jesuit school in New Orleans and became a paper boy for the New Orleans Item.
* When Lapierre was eighteen, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study economics at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he was graduated in 1952. That year he bought a 1937 Chrysler convertible for $30 and fell in love with a fashion editor.
* They were married in New York City Hall on his 21st birthday and drove to Mexico in the old Chrysler for their honeymoon. With only $300 in their pockets, they had just enough to buy gas, sandwiches, and cheap rooms in truckers’ motels.
* In Los Angeles, they won another $300 in a radio game show for Campbell Soup. The prize included a case of soup, which was their only food for three weeks.
Lapierre sold the Chrysler for $400 in San Francisco and bought two tickets on the SS President Cleveland for Japan. They worked their way across Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Lebanon. When they returned to France, Lapierre wrote his second book, Honeymoon around the Earth.
* Lapierre being awarded the Padma Bhushan by President of India Pratibha Patil at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, May 5, 2008.