He was a son of Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov and, his second wife, Princess Ekaterina Petrovna Trubetskaya (daughter of Prince Peter Nikitich Trubetskoy).

[2] At the time of his birth, his parents were living in Paris at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, where they had moved following their 1769 marriage.

Shortly thereafter, they separated and his mother relocated to her Brattsevo Estate and took up with Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, a former lover of Empress Catherine the Great.

[a] In order to hide the relationship from Pavel, his father sent him on a years long journey, both in Russia and abroad, with his tutor, Gilbert Romme.

At the time, Stroganov was serving under Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin, who gave him permission to leave Russia to complete his education.

[6] He left Russia, accompanied by Romme, the artist Andrei Voronikhin (who later became a famous architect), and his cousin, Grigory Alexandrovich Stroganov.

[9] On 10 January 1790, Romme established the Société des amis de la loi ("Society of Friends of the Law"), with Stroganov as librarian.

On 19 June 1790, Romme organized an oath celebration in the ballroom attended by Stroganov, as well as later famous revolutionaries: Antoine Barnave, brothers Charles and Alexandre Lameth, Adrien Duport, Maximilien Robespierre, and Georges Danton.

Stroganov's signature appears under the appeal of the "Society of Friends of the Oath in the Ball Game Hall", which was presented on 3 July 1790 to the National Assembly.

[9] On 16 July 1790, Romme received a letter from Stroganov's father dated 20 June 1790 demanding he leave Paris.

Before leaving, they managed to enroll Pavel in the Jacobin Club (under the name citizen Ocher; Romme joined three years later in 1793).

In November 1790, his cousin Nikolay Novosiltsev arrived in France to retrieve Pavel,[10] likely because of his connection with the revolutionary Théroigne de Mericourt (who had been arrested by the Austrian government), and the two left for Russia in December 1790.

In July of the same year, he presented the Emperor with his idea for the creation of a Privy Committee, that outlined plans for reforms in the country.

During negotiations, his friend, Prince Adam Czartoryski, resigned as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Andreas Eberhard von Budberg, who had a deep dislike for Stroganov, became his successor.

[17] Count Stroganov accompanied Emperor Alexander in the campaign against Napoleon as part of the Third Coalition and became a participant in the 1805 Battle of Austerlitz which led to a French victory in which the Treaty of Pressburg precipitated an effective end of the Third Coalition and dissolved the Holy Roman Empire and creation of the Confederation of the Rhine.

On 21 December 1807, he was granted the rank of Major General, and on 27 January 1808, he joined the Izmailovsky Life Guards Regiment, taking part in the Finnish War of 1808 to 1809, serving under Gen.

On 11 August 1817, two months after his death, an Imperial decree from the Senate, declared that all real estate of the late Count Stroganov in the Perm, Nizhny Novgorod and Saint Petersburg forever passes in its entirety from one person into the possession of another.