1881 in France

Incumbents

• President: Jules Grévy
• President of the Council of Ministers: Jules Ferry, Charles de Freycinet

  Events

• 13 February – First issue of the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is published by Hubertine Auclert.
• 23 March – A fire caused by a gas explosion destroys the Opéra de Nice with fatalities.
• 12 May – Treaty of Bardo is signed between the French Republic and Tunisian bey Muhammed as-Sadiq. Tunisia becomes a French protectorate.

  Births

• 11 January – Lucien Rosengart, engineer
• 21 January – André Godard, archeologist and architect
• 19 February – Paul Tournon, architect
• 20 February – Julien Maitron, cyclist
• 21 February – Marc Boegner, theologist, pastor, French Resistance member and essayist
• 18 March – Paul Le Flem, composer and musician
• 23 March – Roger Martin du Gard, author, winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature
• 12 April – Élisée Maclet, painter
• 1 May - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, paleontologist, Jesuit priest
• 27 June – Jérôme Carcopino, historian and author
• 29 July – Paul Couturier, priest and promoter of the concept of Christian unity
• 7 August – François Darlan, Admiral
• 10 October – Gaston Ragueneau, athlete and Olympic medallist
• 4 November – Gaby Deslys, dancer and actress
• 8 November – Robert Esnault-Pelterie, pioneering aircraft designer
• 12 December - Louise Thuliez, resistance fighter in World War I and World War II

  Deaths

• 19 January – Auguste Mariette, scholar and archaeologist
• 13 February – Alexis Paulin Paris, scholar and author
• 17 February – Emile-Justin Menier, pharmaceutical manufacturer, chocolatier, and politician.
• 1 March – Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys, statesman and diplomat
• 24 March – Achille Ernest Oscar Joseph Delesse, geologist and mineralogist
• 26 March – Jules Achille Noël, painter
• 4 April – Napoléon Peyrat, author and historian
• 27 April – Émile de Girardin, journalist, publicist and politician
• 2 June
• * Émile Littré, lexicographer and philosopher
• * Pierre Louis Rouillard, sculptor
• 28 June – Jules Armand Dufaure, statesman
• 9 July – Paul Bins, comte de Saint-Victor, author
• 21 December – Édouard Dulaurier, Orientalist and Egyptologist