From 1884 to 1886 he was editor and owner of the New York Enterprise which had the largest circulation of any African American newspaper in the country at that time.

The chapter on Arneaux further states that his father was from Paris, France and his that his mother, who died when he was twelve years old, was an African American.

His first appearance on a major stage was in 1876, when he played Tom Walcott, a Southern Planter, in John S. Ladue's "Under the Yoke, or Bond and Free" at the Third Avenue theatre in New York.

[3] In 1884, at the urging of a theatre manager, he took the role of Iago in Othello at the Brooklyn Athenaeum, for which he received strong praise.

[2] Other actors in that production include Benjamin Lightfoot as Richmond and Henry VI and Hattie Williams as Lady Anne.

That November, the company revived Othello at Steinway Hall with the same actors in their previous roles except Eloise Molineaux played Emilia.

Later that year Arneaux again played Richard III with Ladue as King Henry and Bertie Toney (later wife of Walter F. Craig) as Lady Anne at the Lexington Avenue Opera House.

In 1888, Arneaux performed scenes from Othello and Macbeth with Hurle Bavardo and Alice Franklin at Baltimore's Wilson Post Hall.

Arnaux fit into a pantheon of black actors who played that role starting with Aldridge, followed by Arneaux, John Hewlett, and Paul Robeson.

In the paper he opposed the word "colored" in favor of "Africo-American" and advocated for other causes, including industrial schools and the creation of an African Historical Society.

[2] Arneaux was an important part of a network of African American journalists active at that time, such as T. Thomas Fortune, A. F. Bradley, John Wesley Cromwell, L. A. Martinet, J. H. Keeble, and Richard R. Wright, who were all prominent speakers at the 1886 Atlantic City convention of the Negro Press Association.

[15] Arneaux was noted for being one of the few black journalists writing for non-African American papers, which included Sun, World, and Daily News.

He was asked by a newspaper reporter if he would re-open the Enterprise, but he noted that an editor of an African American journal will lose money on the paper, and after the fire, he was not certain it would be supported.

[18] A play was supposedly written for Arneaux while he was in Europe, and he announced plans to return to the US in October 1891 to produce the work.