Pradier was born in Geneva, Switzerland. He studied under Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in Paris. In 1827 he became a member of the Académie des beaux-arts and a professor at the Ecole des beaux-arts.
The cool neoclassical surface finish of his sculptures are charged with an eroticism that their mythological themes can barely disguise. At the Salon of 1834, Pradier's Satyr and Bacchante created a scandalous sensation when the prudish government of Louis-Philippe refused to purchase it. (It is now in the Louvre).
Other famous sculptures by Pradier are the figures of Fame in the spandrels of the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, and his twelve Victories inside the dome of the Invalides.
He is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery.