He was the son of Jean Baptiste Racine du Jonquoy, the treasurer-general for Bridges and Highways and Receiver of Finances (General Tax Collector) of the town of Alençon.
De Monville was raised in Paris by his maternal grandfather, Thomas Le Monnier, who gave him a good education.
[1] In 1774, de Monville bought a country estate at Saint-Jacques-de-Retz, which had a working farm, pasture, and woodlands, and a formal garden à la française attached to the main house.
He called the garden the Désert de Retz, planted four thousand trees from the royal greenhouses, rerouted a river, and created several ponds.
[a] The Désert de Retz was completed in 1785 and contained twenty-one fabriques, or architectural constructions, representing different periods of history and parts of the world.