Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat and philosopher who became notorious for acts of sexual cruelty in his writings as well as in his own life.

French writer Simone de Beauvoir laid the foundation for the modern feminist movement. Also an existentialist philosopher, she had a long-term relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre.

Maximilien de Robespierre was an official during the French Revolution and one of the principal architects of the Reign of Terror.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a famed 19th-century French painter and poster artist known for works like 'The Streetwalker' and 'At the Moulin Rouge.'

French engineer and physicist Charles de Coulomb made pioneering discoveries in electricity and magnetism, and came up with the theory called Coulomb's Law.

Frenchman Marquis de Lafayette fought in the American Revolutionary War and helped shape France's political structure before and after the French Revolution.

French philosopher Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède and de Montesquieu, was a highly influential political thinker during the Age of Enlightenment.

Charles de Gaulle rose from French soldier in World War I to exiled leader and, eventually, president of the Fifth Republic. He served as president from 1959 to 1969.

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet best known for his controversial volume of poems, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil).