Despite her reputation as being private, Fillon ran for a seat on the municipal council of the Solesmes, Sarthe commune in which she and her husband reside.
When François Fillon began running for the French presidency in 2017, she emerged in the public eye to campaign for her husband.
Penelope Fillon rose to prominence in January 2017, when French newspaper Le Canard enchaîné published an article in which she was accused of being paid €500,000 in public money over eight years as her husband's "assistant" while performing no or very little work.
[2][3][4] The daughter of George "Colin" Clarke, an English solicitor, and Glenys, a Wales native, she considers herself "Anglo-Welsh.
[4][5] She spent her final year before earning her degree as a teaching assistant of English at a middle school in Le Mans, France.
"[5]Penelope Clarke married François Fillon on 28 June 1980 in a civil ceremony in the groom's native Sarthe.
[5] While her husband pursued his political career three days a week in Paris, Fillon remained at home with their growing family.
[5] For much of her husband's political career, Fillon stayed home to care for their five children, and when François was a government minister, the family resided in an apartment in Paris's 6th arrondissement.
[5] When he was elected Prime Minister of France in 2007, the family moved to the Hôtel Matignon, living there until his term ended in 2012.
[3][4][6] In January 2017, Le Canard enchaîné published an article in which Penelope Fillon was accused of alleged fictitious employment, as her husband's "assistante parlementaire" for a total salary of €500,000 over eight years on the one hand, and as a "literary adviser" of Revue des deux Mondes on the other, with a monthly salary of €5,000, amounting to a total of another €100,000.
The public outcry around this so-called "Penelopegate"[13] was such that doubts were voiced about François Fillon himself, who was at the time the frontrunner for the 2017 presidential election,[14] with an immediate sharp decline in the opinion polls.