Frémiet lived and died in Paris. Frémiet is famous for his sculpture of Joan of Arc in Paris and the monument to Ferdinand de Lesseps in Suez. Emmanuel Frémiet was a nephew and pupil of Rude and chiefly devoted himself to animal sculpture and to equestrian statues in armour. His earliest work was in scientific lithography (osteology), and for a while he served in times of adversity in the gruesome office of painter to the Morgue. In 1843 he sent to the Salon a study of a Gazelle, and after that date was very prolific in his works. His "Wounded Bear" and "Wounded Dog" were produced in 1850, and the Luxembourg Museum at once secured this striking example of his work. From 1855 to 1859, Frémiet was engaged on a series of military statuettes for Napoleon III. Frémiet produced his equestrian statue of Napoleon I in 1868, and of Louis d'Orlans of 1869 at the Château de Pierrefonds and in 1874 the first equestrian statue of Joan of Arc, erected in the Place des Pyramides, Paris; this he afterwards (1889) replaced with another and still finer version. During this period, Frémiet also executed "Pan and the bear cubs", also acquired by the Luxembourg Museum and now in the Musée d'Orsay. In the meanwhile he had exhibited his masterly "Gorilla Carrying off a Woman" which won him a medal of honour at the Salon of 1887.

Although praised in its time, this work now evokes ridicule from some observers for its depiction of a gorilla abducting a nude woman, presumably with the intention of raping her - something totally alien to actual gorilla behaviour. Nonetheless, this act has somehow caught the public's imagination as witnessed by the repeated popularity of the King Kong theme. Of the same character, and even more remarkable, is his "Ourang-Outangs" and "Borneo Savage" of 1895, a commission from the Paris Museum of Natural History. Frémiet also executed the statue of St Michael for the summit of the spire of the Eglise Saint Michel, and the equestrian statue of Velasquez for the Jardin de l'Infante at the Louvre. Frémiet became a member of the Acadmie des Beaux-Arts in 1892, and succeeded Barye as professor of animal drawing at the Natural History Museum of Paris.