The island's two harbors, Port-Joinville in the north and Port de la Meule to the south, in a rocky inlet of the southern granite coast, are famous for tuna and lobster fishing, respectively.

Irish monks from Bangor, County Down, dedicated their monastery on the Île d'Yeu to Hilaire; Saint Amand from Poitou received early training there, but it was destroyed by Viking raiders in the ninth century.

[citation needed] Philippe Pétain, the proclaimed hero of Verdun during World War I who later became the leader of France's wartime collaborationist Vichy régime, was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason on Île d'Yeu.

[5] The children's author Ludwig Bemelmans, who summered on the island, took inspiration from a hospital stay after a bicycle crash for his first Madeline book, published in 1939.

A two year pilot program, called Harmon'Yeu, was initiated in the spring of 2020 to interconnect 23 houses in the Ker Pissot neighborhood and surrounding areas with a microgrid that was automated as a smart grid with software from Engie.