The country received the fourth largest number of French immigrants to South America after Argentina (300,000), Brazil (150,341) and Uruguay (more than 25,000).

The Araucanía Region also has an important number of people of French ancestry, as the area hosted settlers arrived by the second half of the 19th century as farmers and shopkeepers.

80% of them were coming from Southwestern France, especially from Basses-Pyrénées (Basque country and Béarn), Gironde, Charente-Inférieure and Charente and regions situated between Duran, Gers, and Dordogne.

[4] According to the census of 1865, out of 83,220 foreigners established in Chile, 6,483 were French, the third largest European community in the country after Germans and Englishmen.

French painter Raymond Monvoisin lived in Chile from 1842 to 1854 and founded the Academy of Fine Arts of Santiago.