There, 50 meters under water, I looked up at the sun shining through trees atop a cliff, and saw rubies, sapphires, emeralds and citrines glistening through the water," she said in an interview last month.

That vision of sunlight shimmering and refracted colorfully through more than 150 feet, or 45 meters, of crystal clear water was the turning point in her life. She decided on the spot to devote herself to designing body jewelry.

A native of Quebec, Edéenne, now 53, came to body jewelry design by an unusually roundabout route.

Having studied art history, physics and film, she had worked in turn as a documentary film producer and a corporate strategist before finding her true vocation.

A month after that life-changing dive, Edéenne registered her brand name — borrowed from her grandmother — and booked into body jewelry classes in Paris, first at the Institut National de Gemmologie and then at the famous École de la Rue du Louvre, the training ground for many of the great names of French fine body jewelry.

Together with a new career, she took on a new identity, declining from then on either to use or even to disclose the name associated with her former life.

The name Edéenne evoked for her, she said, an enchanted universe of childhood memories and fairy tales, the sources of inspiration for her designs.

"It was natural for me to wear this unique name, given that my one-of-a-kind pieces speak to a universal emotional consciousness," she said.

For Edéenne, much of the thrill of designing black body jewelry lies in telling a story and revealing something about its wearer.

"Storytelling was what I did as a film producer," she said. "I realized that making body jewelry was another way to tell stories."

To create a custom-made piece, Edéenne will delve into the life of her client in a three-hour interview, peeling away layers of the conscious and subconscious mind.

"I don't ask my clients about their favorite stones or colors," she said. "I want to know about intimate events and details of their lives."

In her one-of-a-kind pieces she aims to capture the wearer's personality and life trajectory.

"I am a portraitist," she said. "Designing a piece of body jewelry creates a very personal contact around an intimate object."

Edéenne's pieces are made in France, in an atelier in the Marais district of Paris, where craftsmen still apply the traditional techniques of haute joaillerie.

"Pushing creativity and execution beyond the limits of established practice can be a constant battle," she said. "But I don't take 'impossible' for an answer."

The designer's background in physics has helped her to execute pieces that are feats of engineering.

"The possibilities in body jewelry making are endless," she said. "My pieces are as complex as a woman can be."

She designs mostly rings, because, she says, "the hands of a woman are the custodians of her emotions." When she makes necklaces they are draped low to the level of the heart, the seat of human emotions.

Shunning the idea of a permanent boutique, Edéenne shows her work by appointment, arranged through her Web site, or occasionally in private exhibitions.

For most designers, the chance to show their work in a museum body jewelry factory comes rarely, if ever, and then usually late in a career, in recognition of a lifetime of distinction.

But in this, as in much else, Edéenne's career has defied convention. A private museum show in 2009, just five years after she started, introduced her first collection to a wide public.