Two years later, she was sent to strengthen French naval forces in Southeast Asia during the Tonkin Campaign, which led to the Sino-French War.

After returning to France, Rigault de Genouilly was modernized and then spent the 1890s operating in home waters, and later in the cruiser division that patrolled the Atlantic.

She was renamed Amiral Rigault de Genouilly in 1895, and she was still operating in the Atlantic in 1898, when she observed the Spanish-American War in Cuba.

The two ships of the Rigault de Genouilly class were ordered under the auspices of the naval plan of 1872, which was laid out to modernize the French Navy in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871.

The third-class unprotected cruisers were to fulfill multiple functions, including fleet scouts in home waters and as patrol vessels for the French colonial empire abroad.

The ship's propulsion system consisted of a single compound steam engine driving a screw propeller.

As the tensions between France and Qing China over the former's intervention in Vietnam during the Tonkin campaign escalated into the Sino-French War in mid-1884, the French began sending forces to strengthen their position in East Asia.

By then, the Far East Squadron, commanded by Rear Admiral Amédée Courbet, that time, also included the ironclad warships La Galissonnière (the flagship) and Triomphante, the unprotected cruisers Duguay-Trouin, Villars, D'Estaing, Volta, Nielly, and Champlain, and the gunboat Lutin.

In March, Courbet sent Rigault de Genouilly, Nielly, Champlain, Lapérouse, and the gunboat Vipère to blockade the mouth of the Yangtze river on mainland China.

The French blockade effort, which included other ports, proved to be effective at interrupting the movement of rice crops from southern China north.

[6] After the war, as the French began to draw down their naval forces in East Asia, Rigault de Genouilly was detached to return to the Levant station.

Rigault de Genouilly was assigned to the 4th Division of the 2nd Squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet, along with the ironclads Bayard, Vauban, and Duguesclin.

The exercises began four days later and concluded on 25 July, and during part of the maneuvers, Rigault de Genouilly and Primauguet represented the hostile fleet.

[13] The ship was present in Santiago de Cuba in May 1898 during the Spanish-American War, when the city's coastal defenses were bombarded by a squadron of United States ships; errant American fire fell into the harbor, and Amiral Rigault de Genouilly was struck in her rigging and her funnel.