In 1761 Dauberval made his debut at the Paris Académie (now Opéra) and became noted for his pantomimic dance ability; in 1773 he was made an assistant ballet master. In 1783 he went as a dancer to Bordeaux, where he later served as ballet master.

A leading pupil of the choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre, Dauberval did much to disseminate his teacher's ideas on the ballet d'action (ballet with a plot). Dauberval's pupils included Charles Didelot (Didelot, Charles), sometimes called the “father of the Russian ballet,” and Salvatore Viganò (Viganò, Salvatore), who introduced the dance-drama into Italy.

Among the several ballets that Dauberval choreographed, the best known was La Fille mal gardée (1789), in which Mlle Théodore (Marie-Madeleine Crespé), Dauberval's wife and one of Noverre's favourite ballerinas, created the leading role of Lise. La Fille mal gardée was both one of the first comic ballets and one of the first to include realistic rather than mythological or idealistic characters. With Vincenzo Galeotti's Whims of Cupid and the Ballet Master (1786), it is one of the oldest ballets still in the repertoire of contemporary companies; although Dauberval's original choreography was lost, there are several more recent versions based on the original scenario, notably those by Lev Ivanov (Ivanov, Lev) and Marius Petipa (Petipa, Marius) (1882) and by Frederick Ashton (Ashton, Sir Frederick) (1960).