Her photographs - taken by famed photographer Aldo Fallai - caught the attention of Mr Chalopin, a French TV producer and writer, while he was flipping through a copy of Vogue before going into a meeting.

Apparently he tore the pages out, and told himself: "If I find this girl, I will marry her."

Six months later, by a strange twist of fate, one of his fashion photographer friends was commissioned by The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper to trail Mrs Fong- Chalopin as she worked the fashion show circuit in Europe.

The photographer engineered a meeting between the two in Paris, and the rest is history.

Now a private investor, Mr Chalopin founded production company DIC, which had offices in Europe, the US and Japan and was the world leader in animated children's TV programmes including hits such as Inspector Gadget, The Care Bears and The Littles.

Three years after they began courting, she decided to give up modelling.

"The timing was right: I was 25, I achieved my modelling goal of appearing in Vogue, I was tired of living out of suitcases.

"I was getting older and girls were starting younger, I met a wonderful man and felt that it was time to concentrate on my relationship, and to build my life as a woman, not as a model."

They wed in 1998 in Chateau de Farcheville, a romantic castle which had 200 rooms and a moat, which Mr Chalopin had bought.

Husband and wife spent the next 11 years renovating it, turning the rooms into 15 beautiful suites. The kampung girl from Pasir Panjang became mistress of the manor, overseeing a staff of 27 including chefs and butlers.

"Culturally I learnt so much. It was like running a hotel," says Mrs Fong-Chalopin, adding that her son Janvier, 20, and daughter Tanis, 19, were raised there.

The couple decided to sell the castle six years ago. It was just too big.

"In life, there are many chapters. It was a nice chapter but it had to end. We didn't want to leave it to the kids because it could be a poisonous gift. There is no guarantee that they can afford to upkeep it," says Mrs Fong-Chalopin, who now owns homes with her husband in the Swiss Alps, New York, Beijing and Singapore.

To give their children a cosmopolitan education, the family lived for periods of time in Lausanne and Beijing.

Their son is now studying economics at Johns Hopkins University; their daughter is doing music composition at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.