He was founder of the Ligue française pour le droit des femmes (French League for Women's Rights), one of the main feminist organizations in France in the 1880s.

However, Richer was concerned that women were not sufficiently educated in republican principles, and that giving them the vote could cause a clericalist and monarchist reaction and the loss of democracy.

[3] Richer published several studies of religious philosophy in the Alliance religieuse universelle and then the Libre Conscience, reviews directed by Henri Carle.

[3] Richer arranged and directed a series of Grand-Orient conferences in the rue Cadet in Paris, where he spoke several times.

She and Richer founded the ''Societé pour l'amélioration du sort de la femme (Society for the Amelioration of Women's Condition), which held the first feminist banquet on 11 July 1870.

[10][b] After the war ended the country was divided between liberal republicans and conservative monarchists, but both groups united in opposing the loose morals of the former imperial court, and women's rights were associated with immorality.

[12] In the mid-1870s Eugénie Potonié-Pierre joined the Society for the Amelioration of Women's Condition and became secretary of Le Droit des femmes and a regular contributor to the journal.

After the republicans won control of the National Assembly in 1879 Richer wrote the divorce bill that Alfred Joseph Naquet introduced in the Chamber of Deputies.

[17][c] He became inactive in the Amélioration society, and in November 1882 founded the Ligue Française pour le Droit des Femmes (French League for Women's Rights).

[2] Richer took an anti-clerical line, writing, "it is enough for us to have to struggle against reactionaries of the masculine sex without giving to these partisans of defeated regimes the support of millions of female ballots subject to the occult domination of the priest, their confessor.

"[11] In 1885 Richer declared that the radical feminists "gravely compromise the cause that they claim to defend", while reasserting his support for women's suffrage:[23] Yes, woman should possess the vote.

He wrote in Le Droit des Femmes on 20 May 1888, "I believe that at the present time, it would be dangerous – in France – to give women the political ballot.

"[24] In 1889 the French government sponsored a "woman's congress" presided over by Jules Simon, which celebrated the role of women in society, and their charitable activities in particular.

Feminists led by Léon Richer and Maria Deraismes organized an alternative Congrès Francais et International du Droit des Femmes, held in Paris 25–29 June 1889.