Exit of a catholic family, Simone de Beauvoir undertakes, at seventeen years, of the higher learning of letters and mathematics. In 1926, it adheres to a socialist movement and, preparing aggregation, follows courses of philosophy in Sorbonne. Incorporated, it achieves a training course with the college Janson-of-Sailly. It becomes acquainted with Jean-Paul Sartre in 1929. This determining meeting with that of which it will share the life is followed of a separation due to successive nominations in province. It returns to Paris as professor of philosophy to the Molière college only in 1936.

Its first book, a novel, the Guest, appears in 1943, year when it leaves the university. As from 1947, the voyages follow one another, in the United States, where it remains in 1950, in Africa and Europe. It receives the Goncourt price in 1954 for Mandarins. It takes part in the political activities of Sartre, militant for the causes Vietnamese and Algerian. She continues to travel, to China (1955), in Cuba and Brazil (1960), in Soviet Union (1962), while continuing the drafting of her memories and her action for the Women's Liberation . In 1971, it ensures the direction of a review of extreme left. One of the first to have preached the legalization of the abortion, it reaffirms its standpoint during the program started in 1972.

Its work, founded on the same existentialist options as the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, is different from it insofar as Simone de Beauvoir, anxious to give to each problem which it tackles their concrete character, seldom uses of the philosophical speech, preferring, with the formulation of a theory, a direct and uninterrupted reflection on lived. Born from a deep desire to communicate, its work is also an interrogation on the function and the direction of the communication. Thus, its tests (Pyrrhus and Cinéas, 1944; For a morals of ambiguity, 1947; America from day to day, 1948; the Existentialism and the Wisdom of the nations, 1948; Privileges, 1955; long walk, 1957; Djamila Boupacha, in collaboration with Gisele Halimi; In the final analysis, 1972; Is it necessary to burn Sade? , 1972) cover various fields. This work, made necessary since the existentialism, denying the existence of a universal and absolute man, considers the multiplicity of the human experiments, must shape in an authentic literature which “exceeds separation by affirming it”.

Simone de Beauvoir, attempting to criticize the statute made to the woman (the broken Woman, 1967; the Second Sex, 1949) or with Old age (1970), multiplies the concrete examples, borrowed as well from its life as with as the literature of all times can learn to him on the experiment, particular to each one, of a given situation. The same will to root thought and projects in lived animate its autobiographical company, at the same time attempt at interpretation of an existence and testimony on an engagement. The action, ceaseless achievement of the project, as well as the experiment of the failure and the presence of death (the Guest; A very soft death) bring the awakening of finitude from which is born the movement towards others. The political commitment - combat for the Women's Liberation, support for the colonized people, revolutionary activity - does not answer an ideological requirement; it is the measurement of freedom at the same time as the act by which, while projecting oneself in the world, one is located and located also the others.

Simone de Beauvoir finally tested himself with the theater (the useless Mouths, 1944), but it is probably its autobiographical work (Memories of a well-behaved young lady, 1958; the Force of the age, 1960; the Force of the things, 1963; In the final analysis, 1972) which remains promised with the posterity.