briller

To shine, both literally (light, stars, polished surfaces) and figuratively — briller en société (to shine socially), briller par son intelligence. Very common, everyday verb with a broad figurative range.

• Les étoiles brillent dans le ciel. — The stars are shining in the sky.
• Elle a brillé lors de son entretien. — She shone during her interview.
• Le soleil brille aujourd'hui. — The sun is shining today.

Brillant means shiny/bright, not necessarily 'brilliant' in the English intellectual sense — a person can briller (shine, stand out) in a situation without being intellectually brilliant, so the figurative use is broader than the English cognate suggests.

• expression "Briller par son absence" — A French idiom for an absence that's conspicuously noticed — variously traced to Tacitus's account of Junia's funeral (where the busts of Cassius and Brutus 'shone' precisely by not being carried in the procession) and to later 17th–19th-century French literary usage.