Penelope Fillon is the 'discreet' wife thrust into spotlight

Penelope Fillon, the British-born wife of French presidential frontrunner Francois Fillon, has long kept out of the public eye -- but she has now become a story in the campaign.

Investigators opened a preliminary inquiry Wednesday into claims by the Canard Enchaine newspaper that she received about half a million euros ($538,000) for "fictitious work" as a parliamentary aide to her husband over a number of years.

The paper wrote that it could find no one who could recall her working in parliament.

Last year, during the rightwing primary campaign in which her husband pulled off a surprise win to clinch the nomination, Penelope Fillon told regional newspaper Le Bien Public: "Until now, I have never got involved in my husband's political life."

In 2008, when her husband was prime minister, she told French TV that her role was limited to "accompanying him (on some functions), and it is limited to that".

Francois Fillon, who most polls currently show is likely to reach the runoff of the presidential election in which he could face far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, dismissed the allegations Wednesday as "mudslinging".

- 'Always in the shadows' -

In November, Fillon paid tribute to his wife, saying: "She has been with me in political life for 30 years and she is a councillor in (our) village... a role she fulfils discreetly and without fuss."

He added: "She has done many campaigns with me, but always in the shadows."

Penelope Fillon, who like her husband is 62, has since 2014 been a local councillor in Solesmes, the village of 1,000 people in the Sarthe area where the couple live in a chateau. They raised their five children there.

The mayor of Solesmes, Pascal Lelievre, told AFP she "never misses a meeting".

The silver-haired Penelope also told Britain's Sunday Telegraph in 2007, after her husband became premier, that she preferred caring for her children and horses in the countryside to the bright lights of Paris.

"I'm just a country peasant, this is not my natural habitat," Penelope joked.

Glossy magazine spreads at the time showed the family sitting in the grounds of their impressive home.

Penelope, from the market town of Abergavenny in south Wales, met her future husband when she was studying law in Le Mans. She was 23 and they married three years later, when he entered parliament for the first time.