Auguste was born on 19 of October in 1862 in Besançon, France. Their father was an artist and photographer.

Louis Jean graduated the technical school and began to work at their father's photographic firm.

In 1894 Louis Jean read about moving pictures of Thomas Edison and became involved in problem of light projection (“moving photographies”).

They produced a single device that acted as both camera and projector, the cinématographe which they patented on 13 February 1895. Louis Jean was the inventor while Auguste Louis managed the project.

Besides the invention brothers Lumière initiated regular film production.

The first paying show was on 28 December in Paris at the Grand Café in the Boulevard des Capucines. That day only one franc 35 tickets were sold. But after this event brothers Lumière experienced great fame,

They went on tour with the cinématographe in 1896 visiting Bombay, London and New York.

The first footage ever to be shot on the device was shot on 19 March 1895; the film was La sortie des usines Lumière (literally, The Exit From the Lumière Factories, or, under its more common English title, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory).The moving images had an immediate and significant influence on popular culture with L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de la Ciotat (literally, The Arrival of a Train at the Ciotat Station, but more commonly known as Arrival of a Train at a Station) and Le Déjeuner de Bébé (Baby's Lunch) and the first steps towards comedy with the slapstick of L'Arroseur Arrosé (The Sprinkler Sprinkled).

Cinema shows of brothers Lumière were accompanied by saxophone or piano.

Creating their films the brothers developed many of the shooting methods. For example method they used shooting Venice in a gondol is now called travelling.

The Lumière firm sent to different countries specially trained operators which shooted and demonstrated their films.

But the brothers could not compete with the other photographers and left cinema after shooting the Passion in 1898. They continued on producing cinema and photofilms and motion-picture machines. Later Louis Jean sold his patents though didn't cease the cinema, he tried to create colour and three-dimensional cinema.

In 1919 Louis Jean was elected as a amember of the Academy of Sciences of France

In 1946 he handed over the French cinematics about 1800 films that were shooted by the brothers.

Lumière Prize was established in France and is awarded awarded for documental cinema.