Lucien Febvre (Nancy, 1878 - Saint-Amour, Jura, 1956) was a French historian best known for the role he played in establishing the Annales School of history.

Febvre was influenced early on by Vidal de la Blanche during his time at the Ecole Normale Superieure (1899-1902) and earned his doctorate in history in 1911 after submitting a thesis on Phillip the Second and the Franche-Comté. Shortly thereafter he took a position at the University of Dijon .

Febvre fought in WWI and took up at position at the University of Strasbourg in 1919 when the province was returned to France. It was there in 1929 he and Marc Bloch founded the journal Annales d'histoire, economique et sociale, from which the name of their distinctive style of history was taken. In 1933 Febvre was appointed to a chair at the College de France. He published vigorously throught the thirties and early forties, although WWII interuppted his work. The war also resulted in the death of Marc Bloch, and so Febvre became the man who carried the Annales into the post-war period, most notably by training Fernand Braudel and cofounding the sixth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. Febvre died in 1956.

Works by Lucien Febvre

• Martin Luther, A Destiny
• The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800.
• The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais
• A Geographical Introduction to History
• A New Kind of History (selected essays)