Never Retiring: Love and a Tranquil Life on the Riviera - Faye Villalba

Faye arrived on the Côte d’Azur in the late 1990s after a decade in Madrid and a career in film production that had taken her across Europe. Monaco was glamorous. The Riviera was quieter than she expected. The beaches were pebbled, not white sand. Life looked different here.

What she could not foresee was how profoundly her professional life would change.

After years working in film, alongside IVF treatments and a four-year adoption journey, Faye found herself at a crossroads. A painful moment at an airport made her realise she could no longer live out of a suitcase. She had waited 44 years to become a mother. Something had to shift.

Yoga, which had supported her through infertility and uncertainty, slowly became more than a personal practice. It became a vocation. What began as one informal exchange — yoga lessons for pottery classes — evolved into a fully fledged business built through entrepreneurial networks, word of mouth, strategic pricing decisions and a bold “one-month intensive” model that worked perfectly in the transient Riviera environment.

In this episode, we talk about:

– Leaving a well-paid but unstable film career – Navigating the French freelance system and auto-entrepreneur status – Building a yoga business in an area saturated with wellness professionals – The reality of financial pressure during the 2009 crisis – Balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship without external childcare – Charging fairly in a profession often expected to be “spiritual” and free – Why Riviera glamour is mostly a myth – And what it really means to nurture a business like you would a child

This is a candid conversation about reinvention, resilience, financial simplicity, women supporting women, and building a sustainable life in the South of France not through glamour, but through passion and persistence.

This is the full-length episode. If you would like to listen to a condensed 28-minute version, it is available on Living the Dream – Radio Edition.

Living the Dream: French Riviera Podcast Women and their professional journey while relocating to the South of France. https://livingthedreampodcast.com