Benjamin Laurent Millaudon (1786–1868) was an exceptionally wealthy merchant, real-estate investor, and railroad developer of early 19th-century New Orleans. Described as a "self-made tycoon," he had emigrated to the United States from Avignon, France, in about 1802.
In additional to his mercantile investments, he owned huge and lucrative sugar plantations worked by hundreds of enslaved people. A coastwise slave-ship manifest from 1837, held at the New-York Historical Society, lists "Lawrence Millaudon" and George Lane as the consignees of a shipment of 73 enslaved people sailing from Alexandria, Virginia, to New Orleans on the brig Isaac Franklin. His railroad interests included cofounding the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad. The 1856 steamship Laurent Millaudon was either named for him or built by him.
Just before the American Civil War, Millaudon sold his million-dollar (in 1859 currency) sugar plantation to his son. In 1862, there was a violent altercation involving whips, axes, and guns, between Henry Clement (H. C.) Millaudon, the overseer, and the enslaved people bound there; the result was the overseer was killed, and several people were wounded before 150 formerly enslaved people self-emancipated and left the plantation for good. After the war, new investors hired Chinese immigrant laborers to take their place.