Born in Lyon on 4th August 1776. Son of a printer and placed at the head of their company, the biggest printing business in the city, Ballanche enjoyed cultivating friendships with intellectuals and literary types. Ampère, Gérando and Camille Jordan were his very closest friends.
Accompanied by Camille Jordan, Ballanche was introduced to Juliette in the apartments of the Hôtel de l’Europe where she stayed between mid-June 1812 and the end of February 1813. From that day on he visited her almost daily. After his father’s death in 1816, Ballanche sold the family printing business and moved to Paris, becoming a close friend of Madame Récamier.
Friend of Chateaubriand, Joubert, Madame Récamier and Madame de Staël, he became a writer, thinker, mystical philosopher and symbolic metaphysicist. He was part of the Academy of Lyon and failed to gain entry to the Académie Française three times before being finally elected on 17th February 1842.
He dies on 12th June 1847 and is buried in the cemetery in Montmartre in Madame Récamier’s sepulchre.