Orphaned at five years old, he was raised by a strict uncle whom he left to start his life in Paris in 1819.
He began as an employee at a hardware store before founding his bookshop, and then starting a publishing house.
He specialised next in economics and in 1835 started to publish the Dictionnaire du commerce et des marchancises.
In 1840, he started the Collection des principaux économistes, which contained the works of the founders of the science of liberal economics, such as Turgot, Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say.
In 1841, he edited the first issue of the Journal des économistes that would be a reference for political economy for the rest of the 19th century.