French was born in the London Borough of Enfield in 1966. He attended Raglan Junior School and Edmonton County School, North London. He gained an M.Phil from the University of Glasgow and studied Chinese at the City Lit. After university, French worked briefly for Time Out magazine and Euromonitor in London before relocating to Shanghai. In 1997 he co-founded the independent research firm Access Asia. It specialised in analysing Chinese consumer and retail markets. In September 2011 Access Asia was acquired by the London-based market research company Mintel. French left the company and China to become a full-time writer of articles and books about China, based in London.
