Marine Le Pen

Marion Anne Perrine Marine Le Pen (maʁin lə pɛn; born 5 August 1968) is a French politician and lawyer, and President of the National Front (Front national; FN), a far-right political party in France. She is the youngest daughter of party founder Jean-Marie and the aunt of FN MP Marion Maréchal-Le Pen.Le Pen joined the FN in 1986 and was elected as a regional councillor (1998–present), a Member of European Parliament (2004–present), and a municipal councillor in Hénin-Beaumont (2008–2011). She won the leadership of the FN in 2011 with 67.65% (11,546 votes) of the vote, defeating Bruno Gollnisch and succeeding her father, who had been president of the party since he founded it in 1972. In 2012, she placed third in the presidential election with 17.90% of the vote, behind François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. She launched a second bid for the 2017 presidential election, which took place in April 2017. She finished second in the first round of the election, with 21.30% of the vote, and faced Emmanuel Macron of En Marche! in the second round of voting. On 7 May 2017, she conceded after receiving approximately 33.9% of the vote in the second round.Described as more republican than her nationalist father, Le Pen has led a movement of de-demonization of the National Front to detoxify and soften its image, based on renovated positions and renewed teams, also expelling controversial members accused of racism, antisemitism, or pétainism. She expelled her father from the party on 20 August 2015 after he made new controversial statements. She has also relaxed some political positions of the party, advocating for civil unions for same-sex couples instead of her partys previous opposition to legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, accepting unconditional abortion and withdrawing the death penalty from her platform.Le Pen was ranked among the most influential people in 2011 and 2015 by the Time 100. In 2016, she was ranked by Politico as the second-most influential MEP in the European Parliament, just behind its President Martin Schulz.

Bio from Wikipedia - See more on en.wikipedia.org Text under CC-BY-SA license