[1] The creation of the imperial University by Napoleon I in 1808 stimulated the formation of a number of faculties of Humanities and of Science in the main cities of the French Empire.

In 1879, the faculty created a research station of marine biology in Sète, and, twelve years later, and Institute of Botany (which is still part of University Montpellier 2).

In 1964, the faculty left the centre of Montpellier to settle in a 30 hectare campus to the north of the city on which 146 000 m2 of buildings for teaching and research were built.

The building houses a prestigious herbarium, the largest in France after the national museum of natural history, with approximately 4 million samples and an important collection of botany vellums, and research laboratories in the fields of ecology and parasitology.

The university is also the seat of the Pôle universitaire de Montpellier which collectively represents the higher education establishments in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.