After finishing her primary education, she entered the Conservatoire de Paris before joining the Comédie Française, the oldest active theatre company in the world, in 1881.

However, Durand considered Marie Denizard's presidential candidacy in 1913 to be an "unfortunate joke" detrimental to the credibility of the feminist movement.

As well as establishing a summer residence for female journalists in Pierrefonds in the Picardy region, Durand turned to activism for working women, helping to organise several trade unions.

Marguerite Durand, consumed by a passion for the equality of women, was an attractive woman of style and elegance who was famous for walking the streets of Paris with her pet lion she named "Tiger."

Instrumental in the establishing of the zoological Cimetière des Chiens in the Parisian suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine where her lion was eventually interred, her activism raised the profile of feminism in France and Europe to an unprecedented level of respectability.