Events from the year 1872 in France.
Incumbents
President: Adolphe Thiers
President of the Council of Ministers: Jules Armand Dufaure
Events
27 November - Meteor shower display over France. Louis Ducos du Hauron creates an early color photograph. Chargeurs established as a shipping company. S. T. Dupont begins manufacture of luxury leather goods.
Arts and literature
22 May - Georges Bizet's comic opera Djamileh is premièred at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. 13 November (07:35) (probable date) - Claude Monet begins painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant, the painting that will give a name to Impressionism) as viewed from his hotel room at Le Havre.
Births
16 January - Henri Büsser, composer and conductor (died 1973) 18 January - Prince Emmanuel, Duke of Vendôme, noble from the House of Orléans (died 1931) 24 February - Gustave Sandras, artistic gymnast (died 1951) 26 March - Émile Armand, individualist anarchist (died 1962) 7 June - Rodolphe d'Erlanger, painter and musicologist (died 1932) 1 July - Louis Blériot, inventor, engineer and aviation pioneer (died 1936) 2 July - Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, psychiatrist (died 1934) 15 July - Jean Dargassies, racing cyclist (died 1965) 28 July - Albert Sarraut, politician, twice Prime Minister of France (died 1962) 22 September - Octave Denis Victor Guillonnet, painter (died 1967) 17 October – Madeleine Rolland, translator and peace activist (died 1960) 30 November - Maurice de la Taille, priest and writer (died 1933) 12 December - Daniel Halévy, historian (died 1962)
Full date unknown
Léon Bouly, inventor of the cinématographe (died 1932) François-Victor Équilbecq, author (died 1917) Colette Reynaud, feminist, socialist and pacifist journalist (died 1965)
Deaths
January to June
6 February - Auguste Joseph Alphonse Gratry, author and theologian (born 1805) 31 March - Jules Guyot, physician and agronomist (born 1807) 5 April - Paul Auguste Ernest Laugier, astronomer (born 1812) 28 April - Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, photographer (born 1802) 20 June - Elie Frédéric Forey, Marshal of France (born 1804) 27 June - Michel Carré, librettist (born 1821)
July to December
5 July - Charles-Pierre Denonvilliers, surgeon (born 1808) 4 October - Jean-Jacques Bourassé, priest, archaeologist and historian (born 1813) 21 October - Jacques Babinet, physicist, mathematician and astronomer (born 1794) 23 October - Théophile Gautier, poet, novelist, journalist, dramatist and literary critic (born 1811) 29 October - Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, chess master (born 1800) 6 December - Félix Archimède Pouchet, naturalist (born 1800) 10 December - Étienne Arnal, actor (born 1794) December - Jean-Baptiste Honoré Raymond Capefigue, historian and biographer (born 1801)
Full date unknown
Ximénès Doudan, journalist (born 1800)