Rachida Dati declares her love for Morocco

Rachida Dati regularly reconnects with her roots. Of Moroccan father and Algerian mother, the current French Minister of Culture always finds time in her busy schedule to go with her daughter Zohra to her father’s house in Casablanca. Rachida has recounted the story of her parents in several books. M’Barek, her father from the Doukkala region, and Fatim-Zohra, her mother, arrived in France in the early 1960s. They live in a public housing unit in Chalon-sur-Saône. The family of eleven children lives in modest conditions.

At the age of 21, Rachida, the fourth of the siblings, began studying economics in Dijon, before joining Elf Aquitaine, the legal department of the Ministry of Education, and the judiciary. In 2002, she joined Nicolas Sarkozy’s cabinet, then Minister of the Interior. This is the start of her long and rich political career. The current Minister of Culture since 2024 had been Minister of Justice between 2007 and 2009 under Nicolas Sarkozy, then Mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris. She has just launched her campaign for the Mayor of Paris.

Despite this political career and her republican duties in France, Rachida Dati maintains a strong connection with Morocco, where she still has family. "We come to Morocco as if we were going home. I can leave on a Friday evening, take Zohra and arrive in Casablanca. We are in my father’s house, we are at peace," she said in an interview on Hit Radio. The French minister likes to reconnect with her roots in her father’s house, located in the Sbata district. "I go there as when I was five, ten, fifteen years old. I haven’t changed."

"In Morocco, I have no subject. People respect you... As soon as things are not going well, I come here. I take the plane, I take Zohra, and I arrive," confided Rachida for whom the kingdom is a true source of emotion. "Every time I set foot in Morocco, I have an emotion that overwhelms me. I owe a lot to this country." The minister owns several properties in Morocco, including a house and an apartment, according to her declaration to the HATVP. The one who celebrates her 60th birthday on November 27, 2025, has an estimated fortune of more than 5.2 million euros.