French Bee SAS, styled as French bee, and formerly named French Blue, is a French low-cost, long-haul airline based at Paris Orly Airport. It operates a scheduled network between France and worldwide leisure destinations with a fleet of Airbus A350s. Its head office is in parent company Groupe Dubreuil's offices in the Belleville-sur-Vie area of Bellevigny, Vendée, France.

In 2014, Marc Rochet (an airline executive at French Caribbean airline Air Caraïbes, with prior executive experience at airlines including AOM and L'Avion) and Jean-Paul Dubreuil (chairman of Groupe Dubreuil, the holding and parent company of Air Caraïbes) discussed ways to expand Groupe Dubreuil's aviation businesses. A possibility included the buyout of Corsair International from TUI Group; however when the buyout fell through in March 2015, a decision was made to instead form an entirely new French airline. In June 2015, Groupe Dubreuil announced the launch of a project under the codename "Sunline", involving the creation of a new low-cost, long-haul airline to be based in France. The airline was publicly unveiled in March 2016, under the name "French Blue". Plans for the airline's first two years were to launch flights from Paris to Punta Cana in September 2016, flights to the islands of Réunion and Mauritius in summer 2017, and to operate a fleet of two Airbus A330-300 and two Airbus A350-900s by March 2018. The airline also planned to hire 400 employees within two years.

After receiving its first Airbus A330-300, the airline operated some long-haul flights on behalf of Air Caraïbes from 1 July 2016, before the airline's first flight from Paris Orly to Punta Cana International Airport on 10 September 2016. In October 2016, the airline announced its next destination from Paris Orly with flights to Roland Garros Airport on Réunion island, beginning on 16 June 2017. In August 2017, the airline received its first Airbus A350-900, and was also considering Mauritius and Seychelles as new destinations for 2018. By November 2017 however, the airline ultimately chose Papeete and San Francisco as its next destinations, with plans to begin serving them on 11 May 2018.

In November 2017, while the airline as "French Blue" was applying with the United States Department of Transportation for a foreign air carrier permit to begin service to the country, U.S.-based JetBlue raised objections to another airline serving the country bearing the word "Blue" in its name. In response, the airline was temporarily renamed to simply "French", before the airline announced on 30 January 2018 that it was rebranding as "French Bee". In February 2018, after receiving regulatory approval to begin operations to the U.S., the airline formally announced the opening of reservations for flights between Paris Orly and Faa'a International Airport (Papeete) in French Polynesia, with flights stopping at San Francisco International Airport each way, and launching on 11 May 2018 as previously planned. The services included international traffic rights for passengers to travel solely to or from San Francisco in addition to transiting between Paris and Papeete.

In June 2018, parent company Groupe Dubreuil announced the addition of a third Airbus A350-900 to French Bee's fleet, to be delivered in June 2019, and that the airline's Airbus A330-300 would be reconfigured and transferred to Air Caraïbes upon the A350's delivery. Following this, the airline's fleet consisted entirely of Airbus A350 aircraft. Also during June 2019, Groupe Dubreuil allocated a fourth A350-900 to the airline for delivery during 2020, and with this expansion to its fleet, the airline in September 2019 announced its second destination in the U.S. with flights to Newark Liberty International Airport, to begin on 10 June 2020. Groupe Dubreuil also announced that it had allocated deliveries for the larger A350-1000 variant to the airline, initially with one each in 2021 and 2022, but was later reported to have been adjusted for both A350-1000s to be delivered during 2021.

In January 2020, French Bee was granted traffic rights to operate services between Paris Orly and São Paulo, Brazil, following the redistribution of traffic rights previously held by Aigle Azur and XL Airways France, which had both gone defunct during September 2019. The airline had not decided which São Paulo airport it would serve between either Guarulhos or Viracopos International Airport, though the airline proposed a June 2021 start date in its application for the traffic rights, with the possibility of an expedited start date during December 2020 by chartering an aircraft from Air Caraïbes. In February 2020, the airline announced an interlining agreement with Alaska Airlines through Alaska's hub in San Francisco, and in anticipation of French Bee's planned services to Newark, a destination also served by Alaska.

During the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on aviation, which included the United States travel ban beginning in March 2020, French Bee temporarily suspended its operations to the U.S., intending to operate its flights to Faa'a International Airport by rerouting its intermediate stop from San Francisco International Airport to Pointe-à-Pitre International Airport, allowing for the route's stops between France and French Polynesia to occur within French domestic territories. Shortly after, the airline instead suspended its commercial flights to French Polynesia after 15 March 2020, with the initial intention of resuming them on 10 April 2020. As overseas borders between the airline's Paris Orly base and its destinations began to close, the remainder of the airline's commercial operations (which included its flights to Réunion) were suspended starting from 28 March 2020, with the suspensions expected to last for at least two months. Four days later on 1 April 2020, Orly Airport closed to commercial passenger traffic.

While French Bee's commercial passenger operations were suspended, the airline still operated some charter and cargo-only flights, and while doing so claimed the record for the world's longest domestic flight, though the flight did not carry any passengers as Paris Orly remained closed to passenger traffic. After making a stopover in Pointe-à-Pitre on a flight from Paris Orly to Papeete carrying medical supplies to French Polynesia, the Airbus A350-900 operating the flight returned from Papeete to Paris Orly as a nonstop flight on 15 May 2020, traveling a great-circle distance of 15,728 kilometres (9,773 mi), with the airline claiming it traveled a ground distance of 16,129 kilometres (10,022 mi). The distance of the flight surpassed the record of Air Tahiti Nui, which initially took the record for its flight from Papeete to Paris Charles de Gaulle earlier that March, with Air Tahiti Nui's Boeing 787-9 traveling a great-circle distance of 15,715 kilometres (9,765 mi).