First Lady of Netherlands

Bianca Hoogendijk, First Lady of Netherlands

Bianca Hoogendijk (Emmen, 2 January 1960) is a Dutch lawyer and wife of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. Her nickname is “the quiet doctor”, because of her academic title and the fact that they hardly enter into the publicity.

Hoogendijk studied law. She learned Balkenende in late 80s, when she worked as an assistant to the CDA-fraction of the Lower House. Some time they lost sight of each other, but in 1996 after four years of a relationship the two were married. Even after their marriage they had initially Living apart: only when their daughter Amelie was born (in 1999) they went together in Capelle aan den IJssel.

Bianca Hoogendijk is the first Dutch wife of a Prime Minister who used her own name, rather than that of her husband. She is also the first woman prime minister for a job outside the home (she works as assistant professor in labor law at the Erasmus University Rotterdam) and the doctorate has (and the third with a university degree).