Born in Thisted to an administrator of Danish crown lands, Malte-Brun was originally destined for a career as a pastor, but chose instead to attend classes at the University of Copenhagen, and became a supporter of the French Revolution and an activist in favor of freedom of the press.

"[1] The case of Peter Andreas Heiberg, who for similar crimes had been sentenced to exile at Christmas of 1799, did not make Malte-Brun optimistic about his prospects.

[1] Malte-Brun's geography treatise was written with the help of Edme Mentelle, a professor at the École Normale; together, they produced Géographie mathématique, physique et politique de toutes les parties du monde (6 vols., published between 1803 and 1812).

He became well known after contributing Tableau de la Pologne, a treatise on the geography of Poland (in 1807, as the First Empire troops established French tutelage in the region).

In his sixth volume of Universal Geography published in 1826 an original Albanian alphabet is mentioned (erroneously thought to be from the first millennium), that opened a whole new research perspective followed by Johann Georg von Hahn, Leopold Geitler, Gjergj Pekmezi and others.