Dr. Cecile Nicole Andree Woel, a retired psychiatrist and matriarch who inspired four of her children to become physicians, died of heart failure Sept. 28 at Sinai Hospital. The Mount Washington resident was 93.

Born in Cap Haitien, Haiti, she was the daughter of Noroy Theodore and his wife, Eugele. She was a 1957 graduate of Faculte de Medecine et de Pharmacie de l’Université d’Haiti and did a residency at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

In a family obituary, prepared by her eight children, they wrote Dr. Woel was raised in an environment where she developed a love of the arts.

She was trained as a pianist and painter and excelled academically. Although she was not a gifted singer, she loved French religious hymns and the music of Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf.

“She sang with enthusiasm, passion and love,” said her daughter, Sybille Woel.

“At 18 under the baccalaureate system, she was admitted to medical school. Later, at the University of Maryland, she completed her residency in psychiatry and was one was of two women in her class,” said her daughter, Alissa Woel. “She was one of those early groundbreakers, and the barriers to graduate studies were high at that time. My mother loved her independence. She also loved having both a family and a career.”

She met her future husband, Gerard-Marie McGuffie Woel, while both were medical students. They married in 1959 in Haiti. After he did an internship at a Paris hospital, they settled in Baltimore on Greenspring Avenue.

“He was immediately smitten by her striking elegance and in particular her hats,” said the family obituary.

Dr. Woel initially practiced pediatrics but later changed her medical specialty to psychiatry.

She was a psychiatrist at the old Seton Psychiatric Institute in Northwest Baltimore, the Sheppard Pratt Hospital and Spring Grove Hospital Center, where she spent decades in clinical practice and administrative roles.

“Despite actually wanting 12 children, she settled for eight,” the family obituary said. They remembered her as a devoted and affectionate mother.

“She was famously rigorous regarding table etiquette, posture, grammar and diction, yet most indulgent with pastries or any sweets, bedtimes, play and festivities,” the family obituary said.

“At her bedside were poetry books, a weathered unabridged Larousse dictionary and her cherished well worn Bible,” the family wrote.

Dr. Woel was a dedicated pianist of Chopin and Beethoven. She was also a gardener and often worked into the evening, watering and weeding. She prepared bouquets of flowers that her husband took to his surgical patients. She was known for her roses, dahlias and hydrangeas.

Survivors include a son, Gerard Woel II, of Philadelphia; seven daughters, Cassandre Woel, of San Jose, California, Alissa Woel, of Saint Louis, Missouri, Valerie Woel, of Baltimore, Sybille Woel, of Baltimore, Arabella Popovich, of Anne Arundel County, Rosemonde Woel Hasani, of Provence, France. and Roxanne Woel Nelson, of Baltimore; and eight grandchildren.

A Mass was held Oct. 5 at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart.