Charles-Henri Brasier had worked briefly with Panhard et Levassor and then for several years with Émile Mors before, at the age of 35, establishing himself as an independent automobile manufacturer. He did so in partnership with Georges Richard, and the two founded Richard-Brasier in 1902 at premises in Ivry, just south of central Paris — the same site the firm would occupy through its subsequent incarnations.
The partnership deteriorated relatively quickly. Richard was frequently absent from the business due to his personal motor racing activities and, reportedly, injuries sustained from those activities. The resulting tension prompted Richard to leave the company in 1905 to found Unic, a separate automobile manufacturer. The acrimonious split involved recriminations and litigation, but Brasier retained the Ivry premises and continued under his own name alone, renaming the company Brasier.
Richard-Brasier and its successor marque Brasier competed in the French Grand Prix era. Léon Théry entered a Brasier in the 1908 French Grand Prix but retired after completing nine of the ten scheduled laps.
The most notable competition entry in the firm's early history was through Albert Clément, who drove for Clément-Bayard during overlapping years, reflecting the interconnected nature of the small French motorsport manufacturer community of the period.
Before the First World War, Brasier offered several twin, four, and six-cylinder models and was selling approximately 1,000 cars annually. During the war, the company was contracted to produce the Hispano-Suiza V8 aero engine. However, Brasier engines were of notably poor quality; the Royal Flying Corps' Quartermaster General, Brigadier-General Robert Brooke-Popham, was recorded as having written that Brasier engines should be issued to squadrons only when no other alternative remained.
Post-war production resumed in 1919 with a 3,404 cc model. Through the early 1920s the company offered various four and six-cylinder models at its Ivry premises, maintaining a prominent showroom near the Place de la Concorde at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées. By the mid-1920s, however, the company's market position was eroding under pressure from more forward-thinking competitors.
In 1926, the firm was purchased by the Chaigneau family, bicycle makers, who renamed it Chaigneau-Brasier. Their first model was the TD-4, a 9 CV four-cylinder available as a tourer or saloon. The new owners sought to return to a luxury car strategy combined with technical innovation, introducing a 3-litre overhead camshaft front-wheel drive car in 1928. Commented upon as "the most modern chassis at the 1928 Paris motor show," the car appears to have remained a prototype rather than entering genuine production.
Financial difficulties followed, and production at Ivry survived only through a major investment from Delahaye, which transferred some truck production to the Chaigneau-Brasier plant to use spare capacity. The company ultimately failed between 1930 and 1931, with sources differing on the precise date of closure.
Richard-Brasier and Brasier occupy a minor but authentic place in the history of early French motor racing. The firm's founding partner Charles-Henri Brasier represented the artisan engineer-manufacturer type common in the French automobile industry of the early 1900s, moving between the major manufacturers — Panhard, Mors — before establishing independent ventures. The Ivry premises that housed Richard-Brasier, then Brasier, then Chaigneau-Brasier represent a continuous thread through roughly three decades of French automotive history, ending as the industry consolidated around larger and better-capitalised competitors in the early 1930s.