The name of the house was derived from the title of Prince of Condé (French: prince de Condé) that was originally assumed around 1557 by the French Protestant leader Louis de Bourbon (1530–1569),[1] uncle of King Henry IV of France, and borne by his male-line descendants.

This line became extinct in 1830 when his eighth-generation descendant, Louis Henri Joseph de Bourbon, died without surviving male issue.

The name merely served as the territorial source of a title adopted by Louis, who inherited from his father, Charles IV de Bourbon, duc de Vendôme (1489–1537), the lordship of Condé-en-Brie in Champagne, consisting of the Château of Condé and a dozen villages some fifty miles east of Paris.

When Marie de Luxembourg-St. Pol wed François, Count of Vendôme (1470–1495) in 1487, Condé-en-Brie became part of the Bourbon-Vendôme patrimony.

Of the sons of Charles of Vendôme, the eldest, Antoine, became jure uxoris King of Navarre and fathered Henry IV.

The youngest son, Louis, inherited the lordships of Meaux, Nogent, Condé, and Soissons as his appanage.

Louis, the first Prince, actually gave the Condé property to his youngest son, Charles (1566–1612), Count of Soissons.

Charles' only son Louis (1604–1641) left Condé and Soissons to female heirs in 1624, who married into the Savoy and Orléans-Longueville dynasties.

He led a quiet life and was known at court as Monsieur le Duc after the loss of the rank of premier prince du sang in 1723.

They sold the Hôtel de Condé to the King in 1770, and it was demolished around 1780 to be replaced by a new neighborhood around the theater that later became known as the Odéon.

The latter was the home of the Grand Condé during his exile from court, and the host château of a party given in honour of King Louis XIV of France in 1671.

It was confiscated during the French Revolution and eventually came into the possession of King Louis Philippe of France, who gave it to his youngest son, Henri d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale.