Émile de Laveleye was born in Bruges, Belgium and was educated at the College Stanislas in Paris, Catholic University of Louvain, and the university at Ghent. His early published works were in history and literature, but Laveleye's most significant work was in economics. An admirer of England's social, political, and religious systems, he was frequently published in English newspapers.

In 1864 Laveleye was elected to the chair of political economy at the University of Liege. Later in the 1860s he traveled through Austria-Hungary, and in the 1880s he returned to the Balkans, writing in the English press about the Turkish atrocities taking place there.