He held the chair of Romance Philology and then of History of the Italian Language at the University of Padua until the end of his teaching activity in 1990.
He founded the Philological-Linguistic Circle of Padua, which has organized a long series, well-known and renowned throughout the world, of seminars and conferences on linguistics and philology in Bressanone.
In 2014, the Municipality of Padua dedicated to him the square in front of Palazzo Maldura, seat of the Institute of Neolatine Philology (now the Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies), which for many years was the place of his teaching.
Folena married the French artist Elisabeth Marcilhacy, painter and poet, from whom their four children were born: Lucia, the university professor of English literature at the University of Turin; Andrea, a mathematician who died in France at a young age; Eleonora, professor of mathematics of the middle schools of Padua; and the youngest son Pietro Folena, for years deputy of the Republic and cultural entrepreneur.
Left a widower, Gianfranco Folena married in 1989 Daniela Goldin, full professor of Medieval Humanistic Philology and History of Melodrama at the University of Padua.