Japanese-Peruvian politician and engineer, better known as the former wife of the 62nd president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, (thus serving as First Lady of Peru from 1990 to 1994). A member of the Peruvian Congress during the 2000–2006 period, she was elected as a member of the Frente Independiente Moralizador (FIM), a political party allied with then president Alejandro Toledo, in both the 2000 and 2001 general elections.
As First Lady during her husband’s presidency, Higuchi was one of the first people in Peru to allege criminal misdoings on the part of her husband. As early as 1992, she denounced several of her Fujimori in-laws for corruption in connection with the sale of used clothing donated by Japan. In 1994, she publicly condemned her husband as a tyrant and his government as corrupt. Fujimori reacted by formally stripping her of the title First Lady in August 1994, appointing their elder daughter First Lady in her place.
Because of her outspokenness, Higuchi was subjected to repeated efforts to silence her. In 2001, she told investigators probing the corruption of the Fujimori years that she had been tortured “five hundred times” by the intelligence services of the Peruvian Army. Fujimori has denied that Higuchi had been tortured. He said the scars on her back and neck were not from torture but from a traditional Japanese herbal treatment called moxibustion she underwent to help her stop smoking and for back troubles.
In July 2001, she alleged that in 1990, shortly before coming to power, her ex-husband received a donation of US$12.5 million from Japanese citizens destined for poor children in Peru, but he deposited it in a private bank account in Japan.
She married Fujimori in 1974 and divorced him in 1994. They had four children: Keiko Sofía, Hiro Alberto, Sachi Marcela and Kenji Gerardo. She died on 8 December 2021 at age 71 in Lima.
Link to Wikipedia biography