PARIS (AFP) - Justine Henin insisted on Saturday that she will never regret dropping her retirement bombshell despite her decision ruling out a shot at a fifth French Open title.

The little Belgian with the big heart stunned tennis by announcing her immediate retirement from the game just two weeks before Roland Garros where she won four titles and the last three in succession.

Henin, who quit as world number one, admitted that heavy defeats against Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams in the quarter-finals of the Australian Open and in Miami respectively, were key to her decision.

But the 25-year-old also said that she felt her desire had been slowly ebbing away.

"Those were the defeats that made me understand that I wasn't burning this fire anymore," said Henin, whose last tournament was Berlin earlier this month, here on Saturday.

"Against Serena in Miami, my first reaction was: 'Okay, I want to give up now'. I continued but deep inside me I feel that my career stopped in Madrid (where she won the end of season championships) last year.

"I really felt that I had reached the end of my journey. But it's difficult to stop when you're at the top. Nobody can understand that.

"But when you don't feel a passion anymore, when you feel tired, it's difficult to go through, especially when women's tennis has become a very demanding sport - 80 percent is not enough anymore."

Henin's fourth Roland Garros title here in 2007 was one of the most emotional.

It came in the wake of a bitter divorce but also with her previously-estranged family proudly watching from the Philippe Chatrier Court for the first time.

Also, had she played here this year, she would have been the overwhelming favourite to achieve a fourth successive title.

It was those factors which made the timing of her announcement, as well as the decision to quit itself, just as surprising.

"If I felt tennis wasn't anymore what I wanted to do, why should I be here as a player?," she explained.

"If I feel I'm at the end of my way, there is no reason why I should play this tournament. All the emotions I wanted to live, I had them here at the centre court of the French Open.

"I know what I did here in the past, and I don't need to live this again."

Henin will now dedicate her time to working with her academies in Belgium as well as in Florida and is happy to walk away from a career which brought her 41 titles, including seven Grand Slam trophies, as well as almost 20 million dollars in prize money.

The only major title to elude her was Wimbledon.

"Wimbledon will remain something that I never achieved. I think it wouldn't make me a happier person if I won it," she added.

"It would have been a big achievement. But me, Justine, as just a woman, I don't think that will make a big difference.

"It means that the story was like that, and there's nothing I can do about that. It's over. It's from the past."

As for her successor as champion here, she is leaning towards Russia but not Sharapova who has inherited her world number one status.

"I think Svetlana Kuznetsova can make it, she's someone I like and appreciate. So I probably wish that it would be her in two weeks."