Background
Lemaire was born in Canada to a French mother and a Quebecois father.
Lemaire was born in Canada to a French mother and a Quebecois father.
After being brought up in Hull, Quebec where she attended Collège Saint-Joseph de Hull, Lemaire lived as a teenager in Montpellier. She read Modern Literature and Political Science at the Institut d"études politiques de Paris, before completing degrees in Law at Panthéon-Assas University (Drug Enforcement Administration, 2000) and King"s College London (Master of Laws, 2003).
In 2012, she was elected as Deputy for the Third constituency for French overseas residents in the National Assembly of the French Parliament. In May 2014, Prime Minister Manuel Valls appointed her to the French Finance Ministry as minister responsible for Digital Affairs. Lemaire subsequently taught legal studies at university level and worked in a law firm, before working at the House of Commons as a researcher for the former Labour Member of Parliament and Minister, Denis MacShane.
Lemaire served as Secretary of the French Socialist Party (Personal) in London from 2008 until her election to the National Assembly in 2012.
According to Le Point, she turned down a ministerial post in Jean-Marc Ayrault"s second government having no desire to leave London being the mother of two young children. She has served as Chair of the United Kingdom-France Parliamentary Friendship Group.
However she accepted appointment as Minister of State for Digital Affairs in Valls" new government in April 2014. Assembly Member
In 2012 Lemaire was returned as Deputy for one of the eleven newly created constituencies, each elected by French overseas citizens to the French National Assembly.
The constituency she represented as inaugural Deputy includes all registered French citizens living in the ten countries throughout Northern Europe – namely, Iceland, Norway, Denmark (including the Faroe Islands and Greenland), Sweden, Finland, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: on New Year"s Day 2011, it recorded 140,731 French citizens on its electoral roll, with the vast majority of these (113,655) living in the United Kingdom, which has the third largest French expat population in the world.
Consequently, her election campaign received considerable attention at the time from the British press In May 2014, upon assuming French governmental ministerial office, Lemaire resigned her parliamentary seat being succeeded by Doctor Christophe Premat. Minister of State for Digital Affairs
Since joining the Ministry for the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs in Paris, Lemaire has been a leading proponent of Netto neutrality legislation.
She is a major actor in the French Technical movement, which unites French digital startups worldwide.