Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet was born in Montaud on May 12, 1842, and died in Paris on August 13, 1912. He was six when his family moved to Paris in 1848. He entered the Conservatoire at the age of eleven. He studied piano with Adolphe Laurent, winning first prize for piano in 1859 and first prize for counterpoint in 1863. Massenet won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1863 with his cantata David Rizzio, and was then admitted to the Villa Médicis. There he met Franz Liszt. They struck up a friendship, and Liszt entrusted him with a number of pupils. Among them was his future wife: Louise-Constance dite "Ninon" de Gressy.
Massenet returned to Paris in 1867 to perform his opera La Grand-Tante. His first successes came with the symphonic suite Pompeia, the oratorio Marie-Madeleine in 1873, and the operas Don César de Bazan and Le Roi de Lahore. Later successes included Manon, premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1884; Werther, composed in 1886 and premiered in Vienna in 1892; and Don Quichotte, premiered in Monaco in 1910.
Appointed professor of composition at the Conservatoire in 1878, Massenet's students included Alfred Bruneau, Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Georges Enesco, Henry Février, Reynaldo Hahn, Charles Koechlin, Albéric Magnard, Max d'Ollone, Gabriel Pierné, Henri Rabaud and Florent Schmitt. At the age of thirty-six, he entered the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He is the youngest member of the Académie.