Henri Pigozzi (Henri Théodore Pigozzi) (26 June 1898 – 18 November 1964), a car merchant and industrialist, was born as Enrico Teodoro Pigozzi in Turin, Italy.
In 1912 his father disappeared, leaving Pigozzi to take responsibility for his mother, his sister, and a small transport business.
After the war he secured the distribution rights for British and US motorcycles in the Piedmont region, selling surplus machines from the military stocks of the allied armies. Between 1920 and 1922 he worked for a firm that imported coal from the Saarland. In 1924 he set up his own business, importing scrap steel from France which was needed by the Piedmontese steel mills. The principal customer for steel in the region was Fiat and in 1922 Pigozzi was introduced to Giovanni Agnelli, the owner of Fiat. Agnelli was particularly interested in Pogizzi because at the time he was looking for a general commercial representative in France. Pigozzi was already familiar with the French industrial scene, and in 1926, when aged only 28, Pigozzi was appointed as Fiat's General Representative in France.
In the same year, he established a new distributing company named SAFAF (Société Anonyme Français des Automobiles FIAT) in Suresnes (near Paris) for importing and later, for assembling Italian Fiat cars. From 1928 to 1934, about 30,000 FIATs were assembled and sold by him.
Pigozzi bought the premises of the defunct Donnet-Zédel car manufacturing company and on November 2, 1934, he established Société Industrielle de Mécanique et de Carrosserie Automobile, known as Simca, at Nanterre.