[3] Lauvergeon was born into a middle-class family in Dijon, Côte-d'Or; her father taught history and her mother was a social worker.

[9] In June 1999 Lauvergeon was appointed CEO of the group Cogema, succeeding Jean Syrota, who resigned under pressure from The Greens.

At the head of the new company, she became a member of the small circle of women directing international corporations; in September 2002, daily economic newspaper Les Échos uncovered a report from the French Court of Auditors, citing Lauvergeon's compensation (salary of €305,000 with a bonus of €122,000) and "golden parachute" of two years' wages.

[citation needed] In 2004, Lauvergeon resisted a request from Nicolas Sarkozy, then finance minister, to help bail out French transport and energy company Alstom.

[14] Towards the end of 2006, Areva encountered difficulties with its new European Pressurized Reactor and announced an expected delay of eighteen months to three years for its delivery, according to the French daily newspaper La Tribune.

In 2001, France's Minister of Science Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg chose her to chair the "national contest of assistance the creation of companies of innovating technologies".

[18] By 2011, Lauvergeon came under fire due to cost overruns at the Areva-built Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant and the loss of a $40 billion contract in Abu Dhabi to a South Korean consortium.

[20] Since leaving Areva, Lauvergeon has been a partner and managing director of Efficiency Capital, an investment firm that focuses on energy, technologies, and natural resources.

[21] By 2016, media reported that President François Hollande had proposed Lauvergeon to take over as chair of the board at EADS and had won the backing of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for her candidature.

[24][25][26] This statement generated reaction and was chosen as an example by Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen to explain that positive discrimination was a kind of racism.

In 2011, Lauvergeon filed a legal complaint after she discovered a confidential report by private investigators on her husband Olivier Fric's business activities.

[27] By 2012, she asked a French court to appoint an expert to examine the circumstances under which Areva ordered a probe in 2010 into the 2007 purchase of Canadian uranium mining firm UraMin; the request was subsequently denied.

[33] Sarkozy's spokeswoman Valérie Pécresse responded by accusing Lauvergeon of trying to "settle scores", calling her statements as "fictitious".