He enrolled in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in 1818, but left one year later and began working at the family's porcelain factory in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis.

Next he went to Egypt, Greece and Turkey, where he studied Muslim slavery, and finally to West Africa, traveling through Senegal and Gambia between September 1847 and January 1848.

Schœlcher arrived from Senegal on 3 March, and quickly went to meet with François Arago, the Minister of the Navy and Colonies of the provisional government of the new Republic.

Arago appointed him under-secretary of state for the colonies the next day, as well as president of a new commission charged with drafting the immediate abolition of slavery,[2] with Louis Percin and Henri-Alexandre Wallon assigned as secretaries.

[8] Schœlcher had convinced Arago not to wait until the election of the constituent National Assembly, which would be deeply occupied with organizing the new republican institutions, to establish the abolitionist commission, arguing that any postponing of the emancipation could lead to revolt and bloodshed in the colonies.

[8] In his capacity as under-secretary of state and president of the commission, Schœlcher prepared and wrote the decree that was issued on 27 April 1848, through which the French government abolished slavery in all of its colonies and granted citizenship to the emancipated slaves.

The next year he ran for reelection but lost to Cyrille Bissette, a former "free man of colour" and abolitionist, but won in Guadeloupe and was again elected for that department in 1850.

[1] He introduced a bill for the abolition of the death penalty, which was to be discussed on the day on which President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte seized power with a coup d'état, on 2 December 1851, dissolving the National Assembly.

During the subsequent Paris Commune insurrection, Schœlcher tried unsuccessfully to mediate peace talks between the insurgents and the French government, and was briefly imprisoned by the communards.

[6] In 1875, Schœlcher became a member of the Societé pour l'amélioration du sort de la femme ("Society for the improvement of women's condition"), and in July 1876 he renewed his proposal for the abolition of capital punishment.