Vidal studied history and geography at the École Normale Supérieure, in Paris, and taught there from 1877 until he became professor of geography at the Sorbonne (1898–1918).

Vidal's life study of the interrelations of people's activities and their physical environment made him the founder of French human geography. He held that the role of people is not passive, since within limits they can modify their environment to advance their own ends. Many later French geographers had either studied under him or his students. Vidal was the moving force behind a spate of lucid regional monographs on France and other parts of the world; all form a distinctive part of geographic literature. Tableau de la géographie de la France (1903; “Outline of the Geography of France”) is prefixed to Ernest Lavisse's history of France and is considered a notable example of Vidal's approach. La France de l'Est (“Eastern France”) appeared in 1917. Many of Vidal's papers were collected in Principes de géographie humaine (1922; Principles of Human Geography, 1950). In 1891 he founded and, until his death, edited the periodical Annales de Géographie (“Annals of Geography”).