Cui was the son of a French officer, taken prisoner during Napoleon's campaign of 1812, who remained in Russia after the war; his mother was Lithuanian. Cui began to compose while he was still a boy, imitating the style of Frédéric Chopin (Chopin, Frédéric), and received lessons in composition. But in 1851 he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he entered the school of engineering and, in 1855, the academy of military engineering, becoming a lecturer there in 1857. In 1878 he became a professor of fortification—his pupils included General M.D. Skobelev, a hero of the Russo-Turkish war, and Tsar Nicholas II—and he retired with the rank of lieutenant general.

Cui's friendship with Balakirev (Balakirev, Mily) and another nationalist composer, Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky (Dargomyzhsky, Aleksandr), developed his musical interests: he began to compose copiously and, although he had no Russian ancestry, became a pugnacious journalistic champion of Russian nationalism. From 1864 to 1877 he was music critic for the St. Peterburgskiye vedomosti (“St. Petersburg News”), and later he became a successful propagandist of Russian music in Belgium and France, notably with his La Musique en Russie (1881). Cui's own music has little Russian flavour, and of his 10 operas only the first, The Prisoner of the Caucasus (begun 1857, produced 1883); the last, The Captain's Daughter (performed 1911, St. Petersburg); and the one-act Feast in the Time of the Plague (performed 1901, Moscow) are on Russian subjects, taken from Aleksandr Pushkin (Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeyevich)'s writings. He turned more readily to French sources—Victor Hugo, Jean Richepin, Alexandre Dumas père, Guy de Maupassant, and Prosper Mérimée—and his only moderately successful operas are based on Heinrich Heine (Heine, Heinrich)'s William Ratcliff (performed 1869, St. Petersburg) and Maupassant (Maupassant, Guy de)'s Mademoiselle Fifi (performed 1903, Moscow). Cui is at his best in the miniature forms, notably his short piano compositions and his songs.