His father Benoit-Jean (1774–1838) and mother Maria Luise (1783–1849) both came from families that were in the textile industry.

He studied at the University of Berlin from 1835 to 1839, and then travelled to North America, working as a museum assistant in Carolina.

Charles Lucien Bonaparte had offered him a position at the Jardin des Plantes but Cabanis turned it down.

He founded the Journal für Ornithologie in 1853, editing it for the next forty-one years, when he was succeeded by his son-in-law Anton Reichenow.

[1][2][3] Cabanis considered the journal Naumannia, the official organ of the Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft, edited by Eduard Baldamus, as too narrow in its geographic scope and its German centricity.