Jagger's father was a businessman and her mother a housewife. They divorced when Jagger was ten and she stayed with her mother, who had to take care of three children on a small income. When Jagger was studying political science at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, she demonstrated against the Somoza regime after the massacre of students perpetrated by Somoza's National Guard. In Paris, she also became acquainted with French literature, among which especially Voltaire, Rousseau and Camus influenced her. She has also been fascinated by Gandhi's non-violent success and the eastern philosophy at large. She traveled extensively in India. She received a scholarship to study in France and became involved with actor Michael Caine. In addition to her extensive charitable works, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Jagger had a public reputation as a jet-setter and party-goer, being closely associated in the public mind with New York City's nightclub Studio 54, which she famously entered on a white horse upon the occasion of a party held for her twenty-seventh birthday. She has had relationships with two US Democratic politicians, Robert Torricelli and Christopher Dodd.
She met Mick Jagger at a party after a Rolling Stones concert in September 1970 where she reportedly impressed him with her French . On May 12, 1971, while she was four months pregnant, the couple married in a Roman Catholic ceremony in Saint Tropez, France, and she became his first wife. At this time Jagger became concerned with women's rights. The couple had one daughter, Jade Jagger (born on October 21, 1971), but they divorced in 1980.
In early 1979, Jagger visited Nicaragua with an International Red Cross delegation and was shocked by the brutality and oppression that the Somoza regime carried out there. This persuaded her to commit herself to the issues of justice and human rights.
In the 1980s, she worked to oppose US government intervention in Nicaragua after the Sandinista revolution. She has also opposed the death penalty and defended the rights of women and of indigenous peoples in Latin America, notably the Yanomami tribe in Brazil against the invasion of gold miners. She spoke up for victims of the conflicts in Bosnia and Serbia. Her writings were published in several newspapers (including the New York Times and the Sunday Express). From the late 1970s she collaborated with many humanitarian organizations including:
She is also a member of the Twentieth Century Task Force to Apprehend War Criminals. She gave a reading at the start of the memorial service in London's Westminster Cathedral, which was timed to coincide with the funeral in Brazil of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot eight times on a tube-train after being mistaken for a suicide bomber in London. In March 2007 she became involved with Sarah Teather and the campaign to close Guantanamo Bay.
On December 16, 2003 Jagger was nominated Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador.
On July 7, 2007, Jagger presented at the German leg of Live Earth in Hamburg.
On May 12, 2007 she was elected Chair of the World Future Council.
In July, 2008 she was a signatory to a petition to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales to allow the wider celebration of the traditional Latin Mass.
For her work, Jagger has earned several awards, including:
Bianca Jagger also appeared in several movies:
