His father was a bookbinder, a poor man who reportedly made many sacrifices so that his son might attend the Jesuit college at Blois; but after young Charpa few years he was compelled to leave and work to support himself.
Louis XVI gave him the appointment of "Royal Mechanician" (Mécanicien du Roi), and provided a studio for him in the gardens of the Louvre, where he used a burning-mirror for melting metals without fire.
Charpentier's device for lighthouse-illumination so pleased Louis XVI that he offered the inventor a pension and a place as the head of the Department of Beacons, asking him to fix the price for his discovery.
Charpentier reportedly refused the pension and suggested that the office be given to a younger man, saying that he would "prefer freedom in order to devote himself to the development of his ideas".
His chief extant works of his, all prints, are: Education of the Virgin, after François Boucher; Death of Archimedes, after Ciro Ferri; Shepherdess, after Nicolaes Berchem; Descent from the Cross, in colour, after Vanloo.