Post-elections
After the election, the couple moved into the Presidential Palace. Madame Nhu was influential on government policy and, since her brother-in-law, Ngô Đình Diệm, was unmarried, she was regarded as the First Lady of South Vietnam. Madame Nhu frequently talked to the Vietnamese, French and foreign press quite candidly.
In 1962, she had a statue erected in Saigon to the memory of the Trưng Sisters, with the facial features modelled on herself, and also established the Women's Solidarity Movement, a female paramilitary organization. The statue cost US$20,000, a substantial sum at the time, given that South Vietnam was a developing country, but she was undeterred by criticism about largesse. She pressured the wives of ARVN officers and public servants into joining her "movement".
Her father became the ambassador to the United States while her mother was South Vietnam's observer at the United Nations. Two of her uncles were cabinet ministers. Her parents resigned their posts in 1963, in protest over the treatment of Buddhists under the regime of President Diệm and disowned their daughter.
As shown in a following paragraph being used to defame Madam Nhu: "Madame Nhu was chauffeured in a black Mercedes and wore a small diamond crucifix. She wore form- fitting apparel so tight that one French correspondent suggestively described her as, "molded into her ... dress like a dagger in its sheath." On formal occasions, she wore red satin pantaloons with three vertical pleats, which was the mark of the highest-ranking women of the imperial court in ancient Annam."
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