The house was commissioned by Louis Majorelle (1859-1926), a Nancy furniture designer and manufacturer. His father, Auguste Majorelle, a craftsman who made fine lacquered furniture, had begun the family firm in Nancy in 1860, making and selling finely-crafted lacquered furniture, and had been awarded prizes and achieved an international reputation for his work at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1878. His son Louis also planned an artistic career, and entered the course of painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1877, when he was only eighteen. His father died two years later, and Louis took over the family firm.