Ambitious heiress with a stormy temperament, the youngest of the three daughters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front which she renamed National Rally, had already reached the second round in 2017 – like her father 15 years earlier.

After her failed debate in 2017, the 53-year-old opponent, MP for Pas-de-Calais, had regained hope after the victory of the RN in the European elections in 2019.

But a semi-failure in the municipal elections and a sharp decline in his party in the regional elections last year had raised doubts.

Éric Zemmour's radical candidacy made him tremble but also made him appear, by contrast, as refocused.

She herself "smoothed" her image, in order to "reassure".

And focused on purchasing power, pushing her controversial plans against immigration and Islamism to the background.

RN President Marine Le Pen at a meeting in Stiring-Wendel (Moselle), April 1, 2022 Jean-Christophe VERHAEGEN AFP

Like his sister Yann, his destiny was first inscribed in the bosom of the "devil of the Republic".

"Whatever happens, you are my father," she told Jean-Marie Le Pen after a violent falling out in 2005.

"Werewolf"

A lawyer by training, Marine Le Pen wore the colors of the FN for the first time in the legislative elections in 1993. With the support of her father, she took over the presidency of the party in early 2011, gradually dismissing the old barons.

Twice divorced, mother of three children, separated from one of the figures of the movement, Louis Aliot, Marine Le Pen then insists on the economy, poor relation of the speech of the RN: strong dose of protectionism and exit from the euro (before to give it up) to seduce the "losers" of globalisation.

Winning themes: in all the intermediate elections before 2017, the RN progresses.

She "demonizes" the party of its anti-Semitic and racist image, until excluding in August 2015 her father, whose remarks she tolerated for years, for some convicted in court.

"I adored this man," she says.

"I fought a lot for him but at some point it had to stop."

Their relations have since calmed down and the patriarch gave him his support in 2022.

Marine Le Pen then engages in "normalization": she renounces leaving the euro, changes the name of the party to "unite", no longer makes the ban on wearing the veil in the street a "priority".

Surrounded by her cats, she wants to preside over France as a "mother".

The French "no longer believe in werewolves", she assures.

"Quiet France"

In recent years, she has blurred the lines, proclaiming herself "best shield" of French Jews, paying homage to Charles de Gaulle whom the far right hated, displaying the Republic and secularism as a banner against "Islamist fundamentalism" but judging Islam "compatible with the Republic".

Marine Le Pen AFP

She now defends "quiet France" against the president of "chaos" and calls on right and left to join her.

However, it has not given up on combating immigration, by proposing to include in the Constitution the "national priority" and the primacy of French law over international law, which could lead to a de facto "Frexit", as well than "Islamist ideologies" in all spheres of society, at the risk of undermining freedom of conscience.

Faced with Éric Zemmour, obsessed with the conspiracy theory of the "great replacement", and the war in Ukraine, which generated a rise in prices, she focused on purchasing power, without giving up a "strategic rapprochement between NATO and Russia once the war is over.

She remains pursued by political and judicial affairs, charged with "embezzlement of public funds" in an investigation into fictitious jobs of the RN in the European Parliament.

Relatives were also convicted of fraud during the campaigns in 2012.

© 2022 AFP