Some 28 years after the re-founding, six Sisters of St. Joseph came to the United States in 1836 and established American roots at Carondelet, a small community in south St. Louis, Missouri within the Archdiocese of St.

The department of communication disorders was established to prepare teachers for speech-impaired children and adults.

[8] Insufficient space led to the high school and college sections to be separated and the former moved to its new campus in the suburb of Frontenac in 1955.

[9] On October 24, 1970, a group of eight African American women entered the library of Fontbonne University with a common goal.

Yolande Nicholson, Antoinette Smith, Rita Hunt, Jeannette Gauda, Collette Lemelle and three others chained the doors of the library shut and began to do their homework as they occupied the space.

[10] Overall, the demands of these women were an effort to more fully integrate African American students and workers with the Fontbonne Community, and to address their concerns about exclusion.

[11] In 2017, Fontbonne purchased 23 acres (9.3 ha) of the former JFK High School in western St. Louis County to allow its student-athletes to train and play home games.

[12] In 2020, it put up the former JFK high school for sale to concentrate on its main campus instead.

[14] In 2022, it was revealed that the huge drop in enrollment of students from 2,293 (in 2011) to 955 (in 2021) has caused the university to operate at a deficit for the past 10 years.

The university is a member of the Division III level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), primarily competing in the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC) since it was a founding member back in the 1989–90 academic year.

The Griffins also previously competed in the Show–Me Conference (now currently known as the American Midwest Conference since the 1994–95 school year) of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) from 1986–87 to 1989–90 (the latter school year was due to dual membership within the NAIA and the NCAA Division III ranks).