Éric Zemmour was born in Montreuil, then in Seine, nowadays in Seine-Saint-Denis, on 31 August 1958, to an Jewish Algerian family of French nationality that came to metropolitan France during the Algerian War. He grew up in Drancy and later in the Paris district of Château Rouge. The son of Roger Zemmour, a paramedic, and his wife Lucette, a housewife, he has said he admires his mother and grandmother: his father was often absent, and he was actually raised by women "who taught [him] to be a man."