Events from the year 1864 in France.

• Monarch – Napoleon III

• 10 April – Second French intervention in Mexico: Treaty of Miramar.
• 4 May – Société Générale bank established in Paris.^[1]
• 14 May – The Orgueil meteorite falls to earth.
• 19 June – American Civil War: Battle of Cherbourg - Confederate States Navy CSS Alabama is sunk in a single-ship action with USS Kearsarge in la Manche off the coast of Cherbourg Harbour.
• 5–6 September – Bombardment of Shimonoseki: An international naval fleet including three French ships defeats Japanese daimyō Mōri Takachika in the Shimonoseki Straits of Japan.

• April – Charles Baudelaire leaves Paris for Belgium in the hope of resolving his financial difficulties.
• 26 May – Alexandre Dumas, fils marries Nadejda Naryschkine. His father, Alexandre Dumas, père, returns to Paris from Italy.
• 17 December – Jacques Offenbach's opéra bouffe La Belle Hélène receives its first performance at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris.
• Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au centre de la Terre) is published.

• 24 January – Marguerite Durand, actress, journalist and suffragette (died 1936).
• 1 March – Étienne Destot, radiologist and anatomist (died 1918).
• 16 March – Lucien Cayeux, sedimentary petrographer (died 1944).
• 10 May – Léon Gaumont, inventor, engineer, film pioneer and industrialist (died 1946).
• 11 November – Maurice Leblanc, novelist and short story writer (died 1941).
• 16 November – Stéphane Javelle, astronomer (died 1917)
• 24 November – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, painter (died 1901).
• 8 December – Camille Claudel, sculptor and graphic artist (died 1943).
• 28 December – Henri de Régnier, poet (died 1936).

• 28 January – Benoît Paul Émile Clapeyron, engineer and physicist (born 1799).
• 1 February – Princess Louise Marie Thérèse of France, Petite-Fille de France (born 1819).
• 2 March – Jean Alaux, painter (born 1786).
• 4 March – John James Appleton, diplomat (born 1789)
• 21 March – Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin, painter (born 1809).
• 27 March – Jean-Jacques Ampère, philologist (born 1800).
• 29 April – Charles Julien Brianchon, mathematician and chemist (born 1783).
• 22 May – Aimable Pélissier, Marshal of France (born 1794).
• 13 July – Célimène Gaudieux, musician and innkeeper (born 1807).^[2]
• 31 July – Louis Christophe François Hachette, publisher (born 1800).
• 7 August – Olympe-Philippe Gerbet, Roman Catholic Bishop and writer (born 1798).
• 1 September – Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin, social reformer (born 1796).
• Full date unknown – Joseph Déjacque, anarcho-communist poet and writer (born 1821).