She was the daughter of a prosperous banker and was convent educated. In 1792 she joined her father in Paris and within the year married a wealthy banker.

Mme de Récamier began to entertain widely, and her salon soon became a fashionable gathering place for the great and near-great in politics and the arts. Its habitués included many former Royalists and others, such as Bernadotte (later Charles XIV of Sweden and Norway) and Gen. Jean Moreau, who were opposed to the government of Napoleon. In 1805 Napoleon's policies caused her husband major financial losses, and in the same year Napoleon ordered her exiled from Paris. She stayed with her good friend Mme de Staël in Geneva and then went to Rome (1813) and Naples. A literary portrait of Mme de Récamier can be found in the novel Corinne, written by Mme de Staël during this period.

She returned to Paris following Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815 but again suffered financial losses. Despite her reduced circumstances after 1819, she maintained her salon and continued to receive visitors at the Abbaye-aux-Bois, an old Paris convent in which she took a separate suite. In her later years the French author and political figure François Chateaubriand became her constant companion, as well as the central figure in her salon, where he read from his works. While her admirers had included many famous and powerful men, none obtained so great an influence over her as Chateaubriand. There are two well-known portraits of Mme de Récamier, by J.-L. David and François Gérard.