As the wife of Laurent Gbagbo, the President of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 to 2011, she was also First Lady of Ivory Coast prior to their arrest by pro-Ouattara forces.

She worked in applied linguistics as a Marxist labor union leader and been nicknamed in the Ivorian press as the "Hillary Clinton des tropiques".

Following the introduction of multiparty elections, Gbagbo and her husband were arrested for allegedly inciting violence in February 1992 and spent six months in prison.

Involved in nationalist politics surrounding the Ivorian Civil War, in 2005 Radio France International reported that she was being investigated by the United Nations for human rights abuses, including organising death squads.

[8] In July 2008 she was formally called for questioning by a French investigative judge, examining the April 2004 disappearance and presumed death in Abidjan of French-Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer.

French judicial officials have arrested and are investigating Jean-Tony Oulaï, a former member of the Ivorian Secret Services, whom they detained in Paris in 2006.

[11][12][13][14][15][excessive citations] Legré was arrested in Abidjan in 2004 on suspicion of kidnapping and murder, but was provisionally released in 2005 and has since fled the country—or is in an unknown location.

She rallied support for her husband's candidacy in the forthcoming presidential election during this tour and urged participation in the voter identification process.