This is probably due to the charset settings. There are up to four places the charset will need to be configured for this to work:
1) In the html in a meta tag to define the charset
2) In the database itself to define the database charset
3) In the database connection
4) In the email server behavior
You can search this forum and the web for examples of how and where to update those charsets. UTF8 is a very broad charset that should support most characters.