Marine Le Pen announced on Monday night that she was temporarily stepping down as head of France's Front National party in a bid to widen her appeal ahead of next month's presidential election run-off, reports The Telegraph.
The far-Right candidate will face Emmanuel Macron, the centrist, on May 7 with the country divided as never before over Europe.
By distancing herself from the party founded by her father in 1972, Ms Le Pen hoped to reach out to potential voters who backed the Eurosceptic and protectionist far-Left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélénchon, and François Fillon, the defeated conservative, some of whose harder-line supporters could vote FN.
"I have always considered that the president is the president of all the French," she said. "Under this banner, he or she must unite all the French.
"Tonight, I am no longer the president of the Front National. I am the presidential candidate."
"I will be above partisan considerations," she added.
Ms Le Pen had already airbrushed out her party's name, and her own surname, from campaign posters in a bid to woo voters from the Left and Right, as well as in recent years "detoxifying" her party's racist, anti-Semitic image.
Sunday’s first round upturned France’s political landscape as candidates from the mainstream Left and Right were eliminated and the two finalists both claimed to be “anti-system” champions.