[3] The Académie had its origins in an informal literary group deriving from the salons held at the Hôtel de Rambouillet during the late 1620s and early 1630s.

Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister of France, made himself protector of the group, and in anticipation of the formal creation of the academy, new members were appointed in 1634.

On 22 February 1635, at Richelieu's urging, King Louis XIII granted letters patent formally establishing the council; according to the letters patent registered at the Parlement de Paris on 10 July 1637,[1] the Académie Française was "to labor with all the care and diligence possible, to give exact rules to our language, to render it capable of treating the arts and sciences".

King Louis XIV adopted the function when Séguier died in 1672; since then, the French head of state has always served as the Académie's protector.

On one occasion, one newly installed member, Georges de Porto-Riche, was not accorded a reception, as the eulogy he made of his predecessor was considered unsatisfactory, and he refused to rewrite it.

The Académie has included numerous politicians, lawyers, scientists, historians, philosophers, and senior Roman Catholic clergymen.

In 1855, the writer Arsène Houssaye devised the expression "forty-first seat" for deserving individuals who were never elected to the Académie, either because their candidacies were rejected, because they were never candidates, or because they died before appropriate vacancies arose.

Notable French authors who never became academicians include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Joseph de Maistre, Honoré de Balzac, René Descartes, Denis Diderot, Romain Rolland, Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Molière, Marcel Proust, Jules Verne, Théophile Gautier, and Émile Zola.

[6] The habit vert, worn at the Académie's formal ceremonies, was first adopted during Napoleon Bonaparte's reorganization of the Institut de France.

The Académie publishes a dictionary of the French language, known as the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, which is regarded as official in France.

[9] These are: The Académie is continuing work on the ninth edition, of which the first volume (A to Enzyme) appeared in 1992,[1] Éocène to Mappemonde was published in 2000, and Maquereau to Quotité in 2011.

In 1778, the Académie attempted to compile a "historical dictionary" of the French language; this idea was later abandoned, the work never progressing past the letter A.

For example, the Académie has recommended the avoidance of loanwords from modern English (such as walkman, computer, software and e-mail), in favour of neologisms, i.e. newly coined French words derived from existing ones (baladeur, ordinateur, logiciel, and courriel respectively).

[10] The Académie Française has informed government officials to stop using English gaming terms like "e-sports", it should be "jeu video de competition".

[11] The Académie, despite working on the modernization of the French orthography, has sometimes been criticized by many linguists for allegedly behaving in an overly conservative manner.

The Académie insisted, in accordance with French grammar rules on the traditional use of the masculine noun, on the use of "le ministre" for a minister of either gender.

The Académie Française is responsible for awarding several different prizes in various fields (including literature, painting, poetry, theatre, cinema, history, and translation).

The most important prize is the Grand prix de la francophonie, which was instituted in 1986, and is funded by the governments of France, Canada, Monaco, and Morocco.

The Académie Française intervened in June 2008 to oppose the French Government's proposal to constitutionally offer recognition and protection to regional languages (Flemish, Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Occitan, Gascon, and Arpitan).