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She was the passenger in the car at the time of the accident that killed her mother on September 13, 1982. Rumours persist to this day that Stéphanie was driving. Due to being hospitalized with injuries sustained in the crash, she was unable to attend Grace's funeral.
Long the enfant terrible of European royalty, her affairs and antics were reported to have driven Rainier to despair. At 16, she began an affair with Paul Belmondo, son of French film star Jean-Paul Belmondo, and two years her senior.Over the years she was reportedly engaged to actor Rob Lowe, music producer Ron Bloom, convicted drug addict Mario Oliver, and Jean Yves Lefur. Notorious for her penchant for romancing her servants, in 1991 she became pregnant by her bodyguard Daniel Ducruet. She gave birth to their son, Louis, on November 26, 1992, and daughter, Pauline, on May 4, 1994. She married Ducruet on July 1, 1995, but divorced him in 1996 after the publication of photographs of him cavorting poolside with Muriel ("Fili") Houteman, the reigning "Miss Nude Belgium" (some sources say "Miss Topless Belgium"). Stéphanie then had another child, Camille, born on July 15, 1998, who was fathered by Jean Raymond Gottlieb, another of her bodyguards.
Though they were born out of wedlock, Louis and Pauline are in line to the throne of Monaco because they were legitimated when their mother married Ducruet; Monegasque law recognizes such children as dynastic. Camille, however, is not recognized as dynastic and will have no claim to the throne unless Stéphanie marries Gottlieb, or she is legitimated by legislation.
Stéphanie retreated to the French ski resort of Auron and had an affair with Corsican bartender Pierre Pinelli. She also made headlines in 2002 when she lived with married elephant tamer Franco Knie in a trailer and traveled throughout Europe with his circus act. She later became involved with her father's butler, Richard Lucas, a married father of two, before turning her attentions to a palace gardener.
On September 12, 2003, she married Adans Lopez Peres, a Portuguese acrobat 10 years her junior. He is a fifth-generation performer, the eldest son of an acrobat-clown and a classically trained flamenco dancer. Lopez Peres is one half of the Peres Brothers, a circus act with his younger brother, Ivan. Rumours that she married the acrobat because she was pregnant with his child turned out to be false.
On July 22, 2004, Germany's Bild newspaper reported that Stéphanie split from Peres, has contacted lawyers to obtain a divorce, and is seeing Ducruet again. However, that fall, Hello! magazine published photographs of the princess with a man the magazine identified as her new boyfriend, Franck Brasseur, a married croupier who also is a member of the Monaco national soccer team.
Stéphanie has since moved on from Brasseur. Her current companion is a 26 year old bartender known only as Mathieu. German magazines have reported that he is the father of a 4-year-old child and is a former bartender at "La Lamparo" on the Cap d'Ail.
In 1996, the Italian movie director Luca Damiano released "The Princess, The Bodyguard and the Stripper", a triple-X adult film based on the end of Princess Stéphanie's marriage to Daniel Ducruet.