After graduating at a young age from the prestigious École Nationale des Chartes, Frantz Funck-Brentano was in 1885 named curator of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, of which he never became director.

The depths of this resource led him to study all aspects of the history of the Ancien Régime: its institutions, peculiarities, personalities and famous events, which he made the subject of highly referenced books that brought great success to the library.

In 1900 he became replacement professor at the Collège de France, in the chair of comparative legislative history, where he dealt with the foundation of western European cities.

After this he served several times as lecturer for the Alliance française, in the Netherlands, England, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Romania and Russia.

One of his sons, Christian Funck-Bentano (1894–1966) was among the founders of the newspaper Le Monde; another, Claude Théophile (born 1892) was shot down on the front at Vosges in February 1916.