French Elections: Who is Le Pen? All you need to know

French President Emmanuel Macron suffered a severe setback when Marine Le Pen’s party, National Rally, emerged victorious in the first round of the country’s early legislative elections.

Pollsters predict that Macron’s centrist Renaissance party and its partners would take third place with roughly 22 per cent of the vote, behind Le Pen’s far-right party, which is expected to receive about 34 per cent of the total. The New Popular Front, an alliance of left-wing parties, received almost 29 per cent of the vote.

The top two parties in each constituency will now compete in a runoff election on July 7 to conclude the two-round election.

Who is Le Pen?

Born on August 5, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, Marine Le Pen is a politician from France who led the National Front (later National Rally) party in 2011. She replaced her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. In the French presidential elections of 2017 and 2022, she ran as that party’s nominee. Later, she resigned from her position as National Rally leader in 2022.

Le Pen was the youngest of three daughters. Her childhood was coloured by the political career of her father, who espoused a range of controversial views and in 1976 was the target of a bomb attack that heavily damaged the family’s apartment building. This and other, less-violent rebukes of her father’s views would inform Le Pen’s own politics. She earned a law degree from the University of Panthéon-Assas (University of Paris II) in 1991 and remained there to complete an advanced degree in criminal law in 1992. That year she was certified to practice law, and she worked as an attorney in Paris from 1992 to 1998.

In 1998, she became a part of the National Front’s administrative team. Her father had started the organisation in 1972, and it served as the primary right-wing rival to France’s major conservative parties. Up until 2003, when she was elected vice president of the National Front, she oversaw the party’s legal affairs department. 

Le Pen was chosen in May 2011 to run for the National Front in the 2012 presidential election against socialist rival François Hollande and incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.