Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin was born on 16 May 1763 in Saint-André-d’Hébertot, Normandy. His father was a steward on an estate in Normandy. At the age of 14, Vauquelin went to Rouen and became assistant to a pharmacist who also lectured in physics and chemistry. He then moved to Paris, where he met Antoine François de Fourcroy, who was rapidly establishing a reputation as a professor of chemistry. Fourcroy made Vauquelin his laboratory assistant in 1783 and together the two men acheived great research success, particularly in the field of organic chemistry, a subject which was still in its infancy.

Vauquelin began publishing on his own authority in 1790 and was associated with a total of 376 scientific papers throughout his career. In 1797 he discovered the element chromium, detecting it in a lead ore from Siberia. The following year, 1798, he discovered beryllim. Vauquelin's other chemical discoveries included quinic acid, asparagine, which was the first amino acid to be isolated and camphoric acid.

In 1801 Vauquelin became professor of chemistry at the Collège de France, but in 1804 he moved to the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle as professor of applied chemistry, a post he retained for the rest of his life. In 1809 he succeeded Fourcroy as chemistry professor at the Paris Faculty of Medicine. He was also assayer to the Mint, and until his death on 14 November 1829 he maintained a great output of papers on mineral analysis and the chemistry of vegetable and animal substances. Vauquelin is also remembered as the sponsor of Louis-Jacques Thenard, another peasant’s son who became a famous chemist.