They included the poet Nima Yooshij, and the writers Sadegh Hedayat, Alinaghi Vaziri, and Parviz Natel Khanlari.
They built the first schools in the era of Mohammed Shah Qajar around Urmia and Tabriz for Armenians and Assyrians.
The first of these schools was opened in 1838 in Khosrow Abad, a village near the city of Salmas where most of its inhabitants were Christians.
It is said that the goal of establishing these schools was to persuade Armenian Iranians – who were mostly followers of orthodox religion and Iranian Assyrians – who followed the teachings of the Eastern Church or Lutheranism – to join the Catholic church[4] St. Louis school opened in Tehran, in Lalehzar area, in March 1862.
Arthur de Gobineau, the French missioner, who at that time was in Qajar’s court encouraged the establishment of the school.
In the following years, the Ministry of Education allocated funds to this school, so the number of Muslim students became more than Armenians and Assyrians.
The Paris based charity foundation Maison Mere used to pay part of school’s budget.
Some notable alumni of St. Louis School included Gholamreza Rashid Yasami, Paul Abkar, Davood Pirnia, Ali Soheili, Abdolhossein Sedigh Esfandiari, Pouya Latifiyan, Media Kashigar, Musa Nouri Esfandiari, Parviz Natel Khanlari, Mohammed Hejazi, Sadegh Hedayat, Nima Youshij, Alinaghi Vaziri, Shamseddin Amir-Alaei, Pejman Bakhtiari, Mehdi Motamed-Vaziri, Dariush Shayegan[7][8] and Mahmoud Baharmast.