Mariane Pearl

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Mariane Pearl (born Mariane van Neyenhoff on July 23, 1967 in Clichy-la-Garenne, France) is the widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002.

Mariane is of Afro-Cuban and Dutch ancestry, and was raised in Paris, France. She is a freelance journalist who met Daniel Pearl while he was on assignment in Paris; they married in August 1999. They lived in Bombay, India, where he was the Wall Street Journal's South Asia bureau chief, later traveling to Karachi, Pakistan, to cover aspects of the War on Terrorism.

On January 23, 2002, on his way to an interview with a supposed terrorist leader, Daniel Pearl was kidnapped by a militant group calling itself The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty. This group claimed he was a spy, and sent the United States a range of demands, including the freeing of all Pakistani terror detainees, and the release of a halted U.S. shipment of F-16 fighter jets to the Pakistani government. Photos of him handcuffed with a gun at his head and holding up a newspaper were attached.

Nine days later, Pearl was beheaded. His body was found in a shallow grave in the outskirts of Karachi on May 16, and was brought home to the United States. Ten days later, Mariane gave birth to a son, Adam D. Pearl, in Paris, France.

After her husband's death, Mariane authored the memoir A Mighty Heart. The book is currently being adapted into a film starring Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman. She is a co-founder of the Daniel Pearl Foundation (www.danielpearl.org.)

Mariane is a reporter for Glamour where she writes the Global Diary column.