Daughter of Thimoclès Pascal, a blacksmith, and Louise Dumornay, a seamstress, she was born in Pétion-Ville on August 13, 1943. Ertha Pascal received her secondary education at the Lycée de Pétion-Ville before being admitted to the Gonaïves Law School. In July 1971, she obtained her law degree, after having presented and supported her Mémoire de Sortie on the Legal Status of the Haitian in Social Legislation. That same year she married Ernest Trouillot, her former teacher and tutor. From this union was born their only daughter, Yantha.

She was sworn in as a lawyer on October 8, 1971. From there, her pioneering career grew into a long list of firsts. In 1980, after having been a member of the commission responsible for revising the Haitian Civil Code, she became the first woman to serve as a judge at the Civil Court of Port-au-Prince—making her the first woman judge in the country. She went on to become the first woman to be admitted to the Council of the Bar Association of Port-au-Prince, and her appointment to the Court of Appeals in 1985 made her the first woman to serve on that judicial body. Then in 1986, she was appointed to the Court of Cassation, making her the first woman to serve on the country’s Supreme Court.

On March 13, 1990, Pascal-Trouillot made history when she was appointed provisional president, becoming the first woman president of Ayiti. In that role, she led the oversight for the country’s first free democratic elections, which ushered in the nation’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Pascal-Trouillot is also an accomplished scholar and author. She is the author of the three volumes of the Dictionnaire Biographique d'Haiti.

Historical Context When the Minister of Justice of the CNG (the provisional government post-Duvalier) appointed Pascal-Trouillot to the Court of Cassation, it was in this capacity that she became provisional president following the resignation of General Prosper Avril on March 10, 1990. Indeed, on March 14 , the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Haiti, General Hérard Abraham who had assumed power for about four days, appointed her provisional president of Haiti with the mission of organizing credible general elections. Mrs. Pascal-Trouillot primary task as Provisional President was to steer Haiti toward early elections in coordination with a 19-member Council of State that had been given veto power over her. She oversaw the management of the council. On December 16, 1990, under the watchful eye of the international community, the first rounds of free-democratic elections were organized, which brought Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the post of president with 67% of the vote.

Full bio in French here https://www.haiti-reference.info/pages/plan/histoire-et-societe/notables/chefs-detat/ertha-pascal-trouillot/

VIDEOS OF ERTHA PASCAL-TROUILLOT PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS