After the death of Père Vanin in 1759, the Abbé de l'Épée was introduced to two deaf girls who were in need of a new instructor.

It was originally located in a house at 14 rue des Moulins, butte Saint-Roch, near the Louvre in Paris.

[2] On July 29, 1791, the French legislature approved government funding for the school and it was renamed: "Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets à Paris".

In 1861, Menière reported to the Académie Nationale de Médecine on several of his patients from the school who had experienced vertigo associated with their hearing loss, which formed the controversial basis for his theory that the inner ear was the origin of vertigo.

The Duke of Segovia was deaf by age 4 as a result of an inner ear infection as a child.