Australian Dictionary of Biography

Dominique Claude Lucien Lenoir (1932–1999), company director and French foreign trade advisor, was born on 14 October 1932 at Nantes, France, youngest of four children of Pierre Lenoir and his wife Odette, née Voisin. At the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of London Dominique studied business administration and economics. Having completed military service as a paratrooper commando, he served for six months in Algeria. He was subsequently employed as an engineer to work with foreign contracts by several companies in Paris, before beginning work at Commentry-Oissel, a contractor and manufacturer of steel, in 1960.

Selected as the representative for Commentry-Oissel in Bangkok, Thailand, Lenoir supervised the construction of the Sriracha refinery. While there he met Jean Duncan, whom he married in 1966. The following year he was sent to Australia to oversee Montalev, an industrial equipment company affiliated with BTP Citra (Compagnie Industrielle de Travaux). The company had established a permanent presence in Australia—Citra Australia Pty Ltd—in 1960 after conducting hydroelectric works in Tasmania from 1949 and working for the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Authority from 1954, as part of a strategy of overseas expansion. He then remained with Citra until 1985, when the parent company ceased operations in Australia, and became managing director in Australia of Citra’s civil engineering division, International Engineering Services Consortium Pty Ltd (IESC). Between 1977 and 1981 he and his family had lived in Paris. After Citra terminated its Australian activities in 1985, he acquired IESC. Among other consultancies, IESC represented Jeumont-Schneider Industry in Australia, the French company contracted to provide the main propulsion system for the new Collins-class submarines of the Royal Australian Navy, delivered between 1996 and 2003.

By 1987 Lenoir was president of the Australian section of the Conseillers du Commerce extérieur de la France (French Foreign Trade Advisors), or CCEs, which was based in Sydney and composed of eleven advisors. The CCEs worked towards the development of French public and private interests overseas; as president, Lenoir welcomed and liaised with delegations of French companies seeking business opportunities in Australia, such as the French bank Crédit Lyonnais. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as a cornerstone of the French and international business worlds, he organised professional and social events such as cocktail receptions and galas that helped to define the social contours of ‘le Tout Sydney,’ that part of the expatriate French community that gravitated around the embassy and Sydney Consulate General. From 1991 to 1995 he was also president of the French Benevolent Society of New South Wales (Société française de Bienfaisance de la Nouvelle-Galles du Sud).

Described by the Sydney-based French newspaper Le Courrier Australien as a discreet man and a ‘bon vivant’ (1999, 15), Lenoir was a linchpin of the Australian–French business world as well as of the French expatriate community during the years he lived in Australia. He received several distinctions from the French government for his work. In 1987 he was made a chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite, and in 1998 he was promoted to officier in the same order. For his services to French interests overseas and his role as president of the French Benevolent Society, he was made a chevalier in the Legion d’honneur in 1993. He was a member of the Royal Sydney Yacht, Union, and Australian Golf clubs. Survived by his wife and their son, Alexander (Sandy), he died of bladder cancer on 9 January 1999 at Woollahra, and was cremated.