He had broad responsibility for maintaining public order, reducing dirt and disease and ensuring that the population received adequate supplies of food.

When Louis XVI came to the throne Lenoir succeeded Anne Robert Jacques Turgot as intendent at Limoges.

[1] He objected when Turgot as controller general announced that the extremely liberal grain policies of the 1760s were to be restored without consulting Lenoir.

[7] They also distributed bread and grain, regulated guilds and manufactures, supervised royal funding of charities and were responsible for health and sanitation.

[8] While maintaining order in Paris, Lenoir had to adapt to the constantly shifting policies and balance of power in the court of Versailles.

He remained loyal to his two protectors, Sartine and Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas, and drew the hostility of their enemies such as Turgot and Necker.

[11] Lenoir helped the Foreign Minister, Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, monitor the opinion of the public and of his political enemies.

[14] He wrote that his salonnière, entertained in her own home, several times a week, courtiers, men of letters, socialites, and these idle persons one sees everywhere and who meddle in everything.

[16] He was a friend of Charles Alexandre de Calonne, Controller General of Finance, who consulted him on matters related to provisioning the city and its financial administration.

[1] A free school of bakery was established in 1782 after much discussion between Lenoir and Jacques Necker, the banker and finance minister, in which scientific theory and practice were to be combined.

[22] However, he ensured that the statutes for hospitals included a statement that, "There is to be strict attention to morals, hours of prayer, and divine office; before childbirth all women must take the sacraments.

[8] Infected women and children were to be treated at the Hôpital de Vaugirard at the expense of the municipal government.

Cadet de Vaux used muriatic acids, combustion of smoke, efficient ventilation and other innovative methods to disinfect insanitary workshops and public places.

[27] Lenoir ensured that many improvements were made to security, lighting, fire control and public assistance in the city He founded the Mont-de-Piété pawnbroking institution and took measures against begging, gambling and prostitution.

[28] Lenoir had a more tolerant attitude toward the theaters on the boulevard and at the fairs, since he regarded them as a necessary and comparatively innocuous amusement for the continually increasing working-class population of the capital.

In fact, it became a requirement for the entrepreneurs of the boulevard to maintain their fairground operations, otherwise the crowds at the fairs would significantly decrease.

[30] In 1778 Lenoir published an Ordonnance that imposed harsher fines on women who solicited and those who rented rooms to prostitutes.

"[31] In 1777 Lenoir created the Bureau de la filature (Spinning Office) near the Porte Saint-Denis, in an area where cloth was manufactured.

[33] After 1737 the only place in Paris where French Protestants could be buried was a wood yard on the river bank beside the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.