The scion of a boyar family, he was educated at home, and then at the French boarding schools of Mouton in Iași and Repey in Odesa.

Upon returning home, he established in 1841 a literary cenacle at his estate in Mânjina, which became a center of political activism of unionists from Moldavia and Wallachia.

The outbreak of the French Revolution of 1848 found Negri in Paris, where he volunteered for action in the revolutionary guards.

[1] After the revolution in Iași, being forbidden to enter Moldavia, he left for Brașov, where he took part in the development of a new revolutionary program.

After refusing, a year later, Bălcescu's proposal to be the head of Romanian emigration abroad, Negri was appointed in 1851 pârcălab (burgrave) for Covurlui County, and in 1854 head of the Department of Public Works, a capacity in which he pleaded, in Vienna and Constantinople, the cause of the Romanian Principalities and their right to autonomy.