"Many people who love him are waiting for him up there. Many people who love him are mourning him down here", writes the French nationalist leader on social media.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the French far-right party National Front in the 1970s, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 96. His daughter Marine took over the leadership in 2011 and the party, now called National Rally, is today one of France's largest.
The relationship between father and daughter was sometimes bitter, not least when Jean-Marie Le Pen was expelled from the party in 2015. Marine then stamped her father's views as too extreme in a situation where the party wanted to broaden its voter base.
"Gave our father back"
"A respectable age took away the warrior, but gave us back our father. Death has come to take him away from us", writes Le Pen in her comment.
Marine Le Pen was on her way home from the French territory Mayotte in the Indian Ocean when her father's passing was announced on Tuesday.
In the evening, thousands of people gathered on Place de la République in Paris to celebrate the death of the controversial politician.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was convicted several times for making anti-Semitic statements, questioning the Holocaust, and committing hate speech and discrimination.
The anti-racist organization SOS Racisme chooses to pay tribute to "the generations of activists who have devoted their time, youth, and energy to the fight against National Front and its ideas".
Granddaughter wants to take over
Le Pen the elder's granddaughter Marion Maréchal (who previously also bore the name Le Pen) is also a politician, but has struck out on her own path on the far-right flank, where she, among other things, backed the controversial Éric Zemmour in the latest presidential election instead of her aunt.
In a long condolence message on social media addressed to "Daddy", Maréchal writes that Jean-Marie Le Pen fought for a long time to enable "millions of French people to be proud of themselves and their country again".
"The opponents, the smooth-talkers, and the dishonest will reduce you to a provocateur. Those who knew you know what an extraordinary man you were", she writes, and claims to continue his mission.
Jean-Marie Le Pen will be buried in his home region of Brittany in western France on Saturday.
