PARIS - Founder of the French far-right wing party National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen died on Tuesday in France at the age of 96, French news channel BFMTV reported.

Jean-Marie Le Pen co-founded in 1972 the National Front party which has been known as the National Rally since 2018.

He was president of the far-right wing party until 2011 when he was succeeded by his daughter Marine Le Pen. Later, he was expelled from the party.

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In his long political career, Jean-Marie Le Pen surprisingly entered the presidential runoff in 2002 against the then-French President, Jacques Chirac.

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his condolences to the Le Pen family on Tuesday.  

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Commenting on Le Pen's death, Macron said: "A historic figure of the far right, he played a role in the public life of our country for nearly seventy years, which is now a matter for history to judge."

Le Pen helped reset the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years that, harnessing discontent over immigration and job security, in some ways heralded Donald Trump's rise to the White House.

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Marine Le Pen learned of her father's death during a layover in Kenya as she returned from the French overseas territory of Mayotte.

In 2011, Le Pen was succeeded as party chief by daughter Marine, who campaigned to shed the party's enduring image as antisemitic and rebrand it as a defender of the working class.

With Reuters inputs