Victor Eugène Jules Harou was born on 25 September 1851 in Fayt-lez-Seneffe (today Fayt-lez-Manage), Hainaut Province, Belgium.

On 15 August 1880 he boarded the Gaboon in Liverpool in the company of Paul Nève, Charles-Marie de Braconnier, Louis Valcke and Vanden Boogaerde.

On 6–8 October they traveled up the Congo River in the steamer Belgique to Vivi, where Augustus Sparhawk was the station commander.

They made their way eastward with difficulty along a poorly marked and uneven trail, and at one point had to take the cargo across the Boundi River by raft.

At Nsouki they freed two Protestant missionaries, H. E. Crudgington and William Holman Bentley, whom the local people had taken prisoner.

They stopped at Ntombe-Mataka, where Braconnier and Nève stayed while Stanley and Harou continued northeast looking for a suitable place to found the new Manyanga post.