FACTBOX - Key facts about Israel's Tzipi Livni

(Reuters) - Opinion polls show Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is a favourite to win a Kadima leadership contest in September to replace Ehud Olmert, who has said he would resign as prime minister when a new party chairman is chosen.

Here are some facts on Livni:

* Livni was born in Tel Aviv on July 8, 1958, and is a leading member of the Kadima party. She is Israel's second woman foreign minister: the first was Golda Meir who later served as prime minister from 1969 to 1974.

* Livni, 50, has already launched a campaign to replace Olmert. She called in 2007 for Olmert to step down following the release of an official report sharply criticising his handling of the 2006 war in Lebanon.

* Livni was elected to the Knesset as a member of the right-wing Likud party in 1999. She was one of Kadima's founding members alongside then prime minister Ariel Sharon. He bolted Likud in 2005 and formed Kadima with some rebels from Labour as he pushed through a plan to pull troops and settlers from Gaza.

* A former operative with Israel's foreign intelligence agency Mossad, Livni had a career as a lawyer before serving as justice minister under Sharon.

* Livni comes from a well-known ultranationalist family but has endorsed withdrawal from some occupied lands as a pragmatic way to preserve Israel's Jewish majority -- if not to achieve a peace agreement.

* At times outspoken, she once called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "irrelevant". Since the launch of the Annapolis peace process in November last year, Livni has been Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians.

(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Editing by Diana Abdallah)