List of Famous people born in France

Louis Martin-Chauffier, real name Louis Martin, was a 20th-century French journalist and writer and a member of the French Resistance.

Henri Duveyrier was a French explorer and geographer, known for his exploration of the Sahara.

Louis Prėvost de Sansac, seigneur de Sansac (1496-1576) was a French military commander and governor. A favourite of François I he fought at the Battle of Pavia and had responsibility for the education of the royal children. He continued to fight for France in the Italian Wars under Henri II and then the French Wars of Religion when they broke out in 1562. He aligned himself politically with the Guise, supporting them in their feud with the House of Montmorency. He led armies through the third civil war, but was not able to achieve any notable success.

Xavier Marmier was a French author born in Pontarlier, in Doubs. He had a passion for travelling, and this he combined throughout his life with the production of literature. After journeying in Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, he was attached in 1835 to the Arctic expedition of the Recherche; and after a couple of years at Rennes as professor of foreign literature, he visited (1842) Russia, (1845) Syria, (1846) Algeria, (1848–1849) North America and South America, and numerous volumes from his pen were the result.

Louis-Ernest Barrias was a French sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school. In 1865 Barrias won the Prix de Rome for study at the French Academy in Rome.

Hervé de Charette is a French centrist politician. He is a descendant of the royalist military leader François de Charette and of king Charles X of France. Member of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), he was elected deputy for the first time in 1986 as representative of the Maine-et-Loire département. During the first cohabitation, from 1986 to 1988, he served as Minister of Civil Service, then, during the second, from 1993 to 1995, as Minister of Housing. In the UDF, he remained faithful to the leader Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Like him, and contrary to the most part of the UDF politicians, he supported the winning candidacy of Jacques Chirac in the 1995 presidential election and not that of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. In this, after the campaign, he found and led the Popular Party for French Democracy (PPDF), a component of the UDF, and served as Minister of Foreign Affairs until the defeat of the Presidential Majority in the 1997 legislative election. In 2002, he joined the Union for a Popular Movement. In December 2009, he left this party for the Nouveau Centre.