PARIS, France, July 3, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - France's far-right supremo Marine Le Pen has spent years preparing the family party for power, but a vital court decision next week could upend her dream of becoming president.

"Whatever happens on July 7, I will continue to wage this fight for France, which remains the fight of my life," she said on Wednesday.

A tough talker with a blonde bob haircut, the 57-year-old firebrand was brought up in a deeply political household.

Born in 1968, Le Pen was just four years old when her father Jean-Marie co-founded the National Front (FN), France's main postwar far-right movement.

She was six when her father -- a veteran of the war in Algeria that led to the former French colony's independence -- ran for the first of fives times for president.

He made the second round in 2002, before losing to Jacques Chirac.

Le Pen in 2011 took over leadership of the FN from her father, accepting its legacy but seeking to render it more palatable to the public, after the leadership of a man who was convicted several times over his racist, antisemitic and homophobic remarks.

She expelled her father -- who once called the gas chambers of the Holocaust a mere "detail" of history -- from the party in 2015, helping to temper its toxic image, then in 2018 renamed it the National Rally (RN).

After coming third in the 2012 presidential polls, Le Pen made the run-off in 2017 and 2022 but was beaten both times by Emmanuel Macron.

In snap polls in 2024, the RN emerged as the largest single party in the lower house of parliament.

"There was long a kind of moral taboo around voting for the FN," she said during a televised interview on Wednesday evening.

"This moral taboo has largely fallen away."

- 'Political death'? -

But Le Pen's conviction last year over a fake jobs scam at the European Parliament has posed a potentially insurmountable hurdle to her long-sought end goal.

She was banned from standing for office for five years, disqualifying her from running in next year's presidential election.

Le Pen has denied the accusations, and alleged prosecutors wanted her "political death".

An appeals court is to rule in the case on July 7, determining whether or not Le Pen can be a candidate for a fourth time.

If she cannot, she has backed her protege, 30-year-old RN party leader Jordan Bardella, to compete in her place.

Critics accuse the Eurosceptic party of still being inherently racist, and say it took too long to distance itself from Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

But by playing on people's day-to-day concerns about immigration, security and the cost of living, the RN is seen as having its best chance to win the country's top job next year.

Opinion polls have in recent months largely placed it in the lead in the first of the two-round election.

- Third grandchild -

Le Pen developed a tough shell after a tumultuous childhood.

When she was eight, a bomb ripped through the Paris apartment building where the family lived, slightly injuring six people but sparing the Le Pens.

The attack, for which no one ever claimed responsibility, left a lasting mark.

"From that point on, being a Le Pen daughter meant entering a fundamentally unjust world, where I would constantly have to watch my step, justify myself and defend my father," she wrote in a 2006 autobiography.

Eight years later, her mother Pierrette walked out on her husband and three daughters, sensationally resurfacing shortly afterwards posing nude in Playboy magazine.

She and her elder sisters Marie-Caroline and Yann did not speak to their mother for years afterwards.

"I developed a terrible resentment," Le Pen wrote in 2006.

A trained lawyer and now twice divorced mother of three, Marine Le Pen keeps her private life out of the spotlight. She however said this week she would "soon" have a third grandchild.

She has sought to soften her image with social media posts of her cats, last year turning up to meet the prime minister carrying a kitten in a carrier box.

Her father's death last year aged 96 plunged the politician into grief.

She said expelling him from the party was "one of the most difficult" decisions of her life.

"I will always ask myself the question: 'Could I have done this differently?'," she said.