His interest in botany originated from lectures at the Jardin des Plantes given by Louis Guillaume Lemonnier.

In addition, he worked also on ornithology, and presented the findings of his expeditions to Africa for one of the Memoires de L'Académie Royale des Sciences.

The convulsions of the French Revolution may have made the access to the text so scarce that in 1880 the ornithologist Alfred Newton republished the original text under the title Desfontaines's Mémoire sur quelques nouvelles espèces d'oiseaux des côtes de Barbarie on behalf of the Willughby Society of London.

He later became director of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, was one of the founders of the Institut de France, president of the Academy of Sciences, and elected to the Légion d’honneur.

During the French Revolution he was appointed to the Commission Temporaire des Arts where he shaped a new vision of Natural History.