Louis-Ulysse Chopard was born on 4 May 1836, the second son of Félicien Chopard, a farmer-watchmaker in the Swiss Jura, and his wife Henriette. Like many families in the region, the Chopards spent the winters making watch movements at home, and Félicien encouraged his sons to learn the trade. Louis-Ulysse saw that the comptoirs, the dealers who collected the movements each spring, cased them and sold the finished watches, took most of the profit, and resolved to work for himself.
In 1860, aged 24, he founded his own manufacture, L.U.C, in Sonvilier, making pocket watches and precision chronometers largely in-house and by hand. Convinced that the future lay abroad, he travelled to sell in Eastern Europe, Russia and Scandinavia, and in 1912 toured Poland, Hungary and the Netherlands with his finest pieces; Chopard watches were supplied to the court of Tsar Nicholas II. He died on 30 January 1915. His son Paul-Louis took over and moved the company to La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1921 and then, in 1937, to Geneva, where its movements could carry the Geneva Seal. His initials survive in the L.U.C name of Chopard's high-watchmaking movements and collection.