She is the first Kurdish girl to appear in the field of art in the history of Kurdistan and the Kurdish nation.
She was also the first girl to appear in ballet in the Middle East and one of the most famous female dancers in the world in the 1930s.
Leila Badirkhhan is the daughter of Abdul Razzaq Badirkhan and the granddaughter of Badirkhan Pasha.
She was born in 1908 in Istanbul. In 1913, after the order to exterminate the Badirkhan family, Leyla and her mother were forced to migrate from the Ottoman Empire to Egypt at a very young age. She spent her childhood in Egypt.
After World War I (1914-1918), Leyl Badirkhan left Egypt and went to Europe, where she began her life. Leyla studied in Switzerland, graduated from the Ballet Institute in Germany, and then settled in France.
Dancing attracted Leila's attention since childhood, so she learned to dance naturally by watching other women dance as a child.
Especially after settling in Europe, all her goals, interests, hobbies, and purposes of her life were dancing, studying, and researching dance and creating in the art of ballet , which were unique and very interesting to her.
From the 1930s to the early 1940s, Leyla Badirkhan performed in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Italy. Leyla Badirkhan has also been invited to the United States, Canada, and many other countries to perform her beautiful dances. As a Kurdish girl, Leyla Badirkhan had a great influence on her performance in ballet, especially among the people she was known as the Kurdish princess.
Leyla has always proudly identified herself as a Kurdish girl and a Kurdish people. Leyla Badirkhan's historical letters prove these facts. Badirkhan Pasha's struggling family also had a great influence on Leyla's emergence as a Kurdish artist. Leyla was very young when her father, Abdul Razzaq Badirkhan, died, but Abdul Razzaq had a great influence on her daughter. Abdul Razzaq Badirkhan was the only Kurdish leader to have a piano in his home.
Princess Leyla was also a Kurdish intellectual and historian. She loved to read the pages of history. She has researched Zoroastrian ceremonies, ancient Iranian, Egyptian, and Indian religions, and Eastern religious dances.
Leyla Badirkhan was the first Kurdish female artist to enter the pages of world history with her national identity. The world's historical albums and archives are full of beautiful pictures of the Kurdish princess.
After her advanced age, she could no longer continue to perform her ballet and beautiful dances, but continued to work in culture, reading and research until she died in 1986 in Paris, France.[1]