The French were among the earlier European settlers in New Zealand, and established a colony at Akaroa in the South Island.

[2] Captain Jean-François-Marie de Surville is the first known Frenchman to have visited New Zealand,[3] in 1769, and by the 1830s, French whalers were operating off the Banks Peninsula.

In 1835, Jean-Baptiste Pompallier was the first bishop of any denomination in New Zealand and was known to be sympathetic to Māori interests at the time.

[5] Suzanne Aubert came to New Zealand from France in 1860, and founded the Sisters of Compassion in 1892, a religious order of nuns.

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