Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris on 9 January 1908. Beauvoir was a serious student. She studied math at the Institut Catholique de Paris. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne where she earned an MA.
As a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, she first encountered Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she would maintain a lifelong relationship.
As a distinguished French essayist, novelist, and Existentialist, Simone de Beauvoir was known for her left-wing political views and her rejection of society's traditional roles for women. Among her most important works was the feminist treatise "Le Deuxieme Sexe" (The Second Sex) published in 1949.