After leaving the Imperial Lyceum in 1811, he studied until 1813 at the École Polytechnique, and then entered the Corps des mines.

[2] In conjunction with Élie de Beaumont in 1841 he published a great geological map of France, the result of investigations carried on during thirteen years (1823–1836).

1837–1839), Mémoires pour servir a une description géologique de la France,[4] in four vols.

[2] Other literary productions of Dufrénoy are an account of the iron mines of the eastern Pyrenees (1834), and a treatise on mineralogy (3 vols.

As an eminent professor of mineralogy, Dufrénoy returned to London to acquire the mineral collection created by Abbé Haüy, one of the founders of crystallography, and this acquisition lead to the mineralogical collection of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle becoming one of the world's best.