Born in 1954, Henry Laurens attended elementary and high school in Paris. He studied in the literary preparatory classes at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand from 1973 to 1976 and began studying Arabic that same year. In 1977–1978, he completed his national service in the Middle East. In 1979, he earned his Diplôme d’études avancées (DEA) at Paris-Sorbonne; the following year, he obtained his agrégation in history; and in 1981, he completed his doctoral dissertation and received his degree from INALCO in Classical Arabic.
In 1981–1982, he was a fellow at the Institute of Arab Studies in Damascus and taught at Cairo University in 1982–1983. From 1983 to 1990, he served as an agrégé acting as an assistant professor of contemporary history at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. In 1989, he defended his doctoral dissertation. In 1990, he was promoted to associate professor at Paris-Sorbonne, and in 1991 he became a professor at INALCO.
From September 2001 to 2003, he served successively as director of the Center for Studies and Research on the Contemporary Middle East (CERMOC) in Beirut and then as scientific director of the French Institute of the Near East.
In 2003, he took up his position at the Collège de France as holder of the Chair of Contemporary History of the Arab World.
