Jean-Marie Pierre Lehn was born to Pierre and Marie (Salomon) Lehn on September 30, 1939, in Rosheim, in the Alsace region of northeastern France. After completing a diverse curriculum of chemistry, classics, and philosophy at the Collège Freppel in 1957, Lehn continued his studies at the University of Strasbourg, where he turned his attention to organic chemistry. He earned his bachelor's from the University of Strausbourg in 1960, and was granted his doctorate by the same institution in 1963.

Lehn spent a year in the United States as a visiting professor at Harvard University, working with Roald Hoffmann on quantum mechanics and with R. B. Woodward on the composition of vitamin B12, and returned to the University of Strasbourg as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1966. By this time, he had already begun studies of the human nervous system in order to determine biological and chemical relationships within the human body...