A self-described modern woman, the 40-year-old one-time single mother makes no secret of her freewheeling past, including high-profile trysts with the likes of Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton.
Yet while the French have been scandalized by Sarkozy's splashy lifestyle and his very public divorce just months after winning office, they have taken to Bruni in a big way.
The title of the new album - her third - is revealing: "Comme si de rien n'etait" ("As If Nothing Had Happened"). It was released in many European countries on Friday, sandwiched between the G-8 summit in Japan and today's summit of world leaders in Paris. The album comes out in the United States next month, under its French title.
At the Elysee presidential palace - where the first lady maintains an office but has yet to take up permanent residence - Bruni's fortunes are of keen strategic interest. An aide and friend of Sarkozy, Pierre Charon, has been assigned to guide her through the minefields of French politics.
"For the moment, she's a good card," said Colombe Pringle, executive editor of the celebrity magazine Point de Vue, before adding: "It can turn very fast. . . . It might backlash."
"It's important that [the album] is good," she said.
Less than five months after her Feb. 2 marriage to Sarkozy, the culmination of a whirlwind romance, Bruni has brought a measure of calm to the frenetic president and class to the presidential image - apparently without compromising her essential self.
Despite the boost, Sarkozy's own support ratings remain dismal, at around 40 percent - compared to nearly 70 percent approval in June for Bruni.
Bruni, from a wealthy Turin family of industrialists and musicians, made her name as a guitar-strumming singer in 2002 with her hit first album, "Quelqu'un m'a dit" ("Someone Told Me"). Featuring folksy tunes and Bruni's cracked, softly sexy voice, the album was a hit, selling 2 million copies. A second album "No Promises" was not.
One of the 14 songs on her new album, "Ma came" ("My Drug"), has already received one bad review - from Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo, who took offense at the lyrics: "You are my drug/ More deadly than Afghan heroin/ More dangerous than white Colombian."
"Coming from the mouth of the wife of the president of France, this type of statement is very painful for Colombia," Araujo said last month after the French newspaper Le Figaro leaked the text. Colombia produces more than 80 percent of the world's cocaine.
Bruni wrote and composed most of the songs on the album, which also features a cover in English of Bob Dylan's "You Belong to Me" and an Italian song.
In a concession to her official status, she will not give concerts and royalties will go to the Foundation of France, which funds charities, said Rebecca Hayat of Bruni's record label, Naive.
Will listeners get a musical peek into Bruni's love affair with Sarkozy, whom she met at a dinner party? Alas, not really.
She did say in a lengthy interview with the daily Liberation that one song, "L'Amoureuse" ("Woman in Love"), was "developed" if not written after meeting the president.
She cites one passage in particular: "The streets are gardens/ I dance on the sidewalks."
