Christian Louboutin was born on 7 January 1964 in Paris and grew up in the 12th arrondissement, the only son among four children of a cabinet-maker and a homemaker from Brittany. He was expelled from school three times and left home in his early teens. As a teenager he was part of the crowd at the nightclub Le Palace, and his first job was backstage at the Folies Bergère, an experience he has credited, with his later years at Charles Jourdan and Roger Vivier, for turning an interest in women's shoes into a profession. He travelled in Egypt and India before returning to Paris in 1981 with a portfolio of drawings of elaborate shoes.
The portfolio won him work at Charles Jourdan, and he went on to apprentice with Roger Vivier, the inventor of the modern stiletto. As a freelance designer he made women's shoes for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Maud Frizon. In the late 1980s he left shoes for a time to work as a landscape gardener.
In late 1991, with his friends and partners Henri Seydoux and Bruno Chambelland, he launched his label, opening his first shop on rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau in the 1st arrondissement on 21 November 1991. Princess Caroline of Monaco was an early customer, and her praise, overheard and published by a fashion journalist, brought him wider notice. In 1992 or 1993 he painted the sole of a prototype with an assistant's red nail varnish, and the red-lacquered sole became his signature (it is now specified as Pantone 18-1663 TPX). Through the 1990s and 2000s he helped bring the high stiletto back, with heels of 120 mm and more.
He added handbags in 2003, men's shoes in 2011 and, with Batallure Beauty, the beauty line Christian Louboutin Beauté in 2012, while refusing to license his name. The red sole has been defended in court around the world: a US court ruled in September 2012 that the mark is valid where the red sole contrasts with the upper (so Yves Saint Laurent could keep selling all-red shoes) in June 2018 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that a colour applied to a sole can be a valid trademark, while Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court refused the mark in 2017. A retrospective opened at the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris in February 2020, marking thirty years of the house. In March 2021 the investment company Exor bought a 25% stake for $643 million; Louboutin remains its creative head. He lives with the landscape architect Louis Benech, his partner since 1999.