[1] Her construction began on 18 December 1928,[1] and her keel was laid down at the Augustin Normand shipyard in Le Havre, France, on 22 August 1929.

[1] Her official trials began on 16 April 1932,[1] and her final equipping and armament took place at Cherbourg, France,[1] from 31 December 1932 to 15 March 1933.

In 1940 the Allies made plans to intervene in Norway to prevent the shipment of iron ore from Sweden to Germany via Narvik on the Norwegian coast.

The French submarines found limited facilities available to them at Harwich and had to rely largely on Jules Verne and spare parts sent from Cherbourg in France for repairs, some of which never were completed.

[5] On 4 June 1940 Jules Verne and all the French submarines assigned to her departed Dundee and proceeded to Brest, France.

[4] At 18:30, Jules Verne and 13 submarines, including Orphée, got underway from Brest bound for Casablanca, French Morocco, which they reached on 23 June 1940.

On 3 July 1940, the British began Operation Catapult, which sought to seize or neutralize the ships of the French Navy to prevent their use by the Axis Powers.

[1] Tensions again increased at Casablanca on 21 July 1940 when the French Air Force flew a reconnaissance mission over Gibraltar, but relaxed a few hours later.

[1] Orphée became flagship of the 13th Submarine Division — which also included Amazone, Antiope, and Sibylle — in September 1940, and continued to operate from Casablanca during 1940, 1941, and 1942.

[1] As the Naval Battle of Casablanca raged between United States Navy and Vichy French forces, she sighted several Allied ships on 8 and 9 November 1942, but was unable to attack any of them.

[1] She got back underway at 03:00 bound for Dakar in Senegal, but during the day on 10 November French resistance to the Allied invasion ended, and she again was recalled.

[1] At 13:53 on 2 March 1944, she fired a torpedo at the Spanish steam cargo ship SS Virgen de Montserrat near Barcelona.

[1] In August 1945, when World War II came to an end with the cessation of hostilities between the Allies and Japan, she still was part of the Oran Submarine Group.