Assimopoulos was born to an academic family in Athens, Greece with strong social democratic connections (her father's books were burned as subversive by the right-wing military dictatorship that governed the country from 1967 to 1974).
[1] She first ran as PQ candidate in the 1981 provincial election in the riding of Laurier, at a time when the party was reaching out to non-francophone cultural communities.
She continued to support Johnson's leadership after the election, including his decision to downplay Quebec sovereignty in favour of a "new national affirmation" in the existing federalist model.
[8] Lucien Bouchard succeeded Parizeau as party leader and premier in 1996 and shortly thereafter appointed Assimopoulos as president of the Conseil supérieur de la langue francaise in a bid to rebuild connections with Quebec's cultural communities.
She was quoted as saying, "There is a great risk that bilingualism spreads, in a short period of time, across the whole province and Quebec loses its French face.