The prize was founded by
Julia Kristeva on 9 January 2008, the 100th anniversary of de Beauvoir's birth.
Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir and Pierre Bras are the head of the Simone de Beauvoir prize committee.[2]
According to the organizers:
The prize is awarded every year to a remarkable personality whose courage and thoughts are examples for everybody, in the spirit of Simone de Beauvoir who wrote: "The ultimate end, for which human beings should aim, is liberty, the only capable [thing], to establish every end on."[3]