La Belle was one of Robert de La Salle's four ships when he explored the Gulf of Mexico with the ill-fated mission of starting a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River in 1685. La Belle was wrecked in present-day Matagorda Bay the following year, dooming La Salle's Texas colony to failure. The wreckage of La Belle lay forgotten until it was discovered by a team of state archaeologists in 1995. The discovery of La Salle's flagship was regarded as one of the most important archaeological finds of the century in Texas, and a major excavation was launched by the state of Texas that, over a period of about a year, recovered the entire shipwreck and over a million artifacts.

In the late 17th century, much of North America had been claimed by European countries. Spain claimed Florida, and New Spain included both today's Mexico and much of the southwestern part of the continent. The northern Atlantic coast was claimed by Britain, and New France included much of what is now Canada as well as the Illinois Country. France feared that their colonies in the center of the continent were vulnerable to potential attacks from their neighbors. In 1681, French nobleman René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, launched an expedition down the Mississippi River from New France, expecting to find a path to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, La Salle found a route to the Gulf of Mexico. Although Hernando de Soto had explored and claimed this area for Spain 140 years before, on April 9, 1682 La Salle claimed the Mississippi River valley for the French king, Louis XIV, naming the territory Louisiana in his honor.

La Salle knew that French control of the Mississippi would split Spanish Florida from New Spain, and he believed that the Mississippi River was near the edge of New Spain. On his return to France in 1683, La Salle argued that a small number of Frenchmen could successfully invade New Spain by relying on the help of 15,000 Indians who were angry over Spanish enslavement. This had been suggested as early as 1678 by Diego de Penalosa, the former governor of New Mexico who had fled to France after being targeted by the Inquisition. La Salle proposed establishing a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, providing a base for promoting Christianity among the native peoples as well as a convenient location for attacking Nueva Vizcaya and gaining control of its lucrative silver mines. After Spain declared war on France in October 1683, Louis agreed to back La Salle, whose official duties now included "confirming the Indians' allegiance to the crown, leading them to the true faith, and maintaining intertribal peace".

La Salle originally intended to sail to New France, journey overland to the Illinois Country, and then sail down the Mississippi River to its mouth, where he would plant his colony. To carry his supplies, he would need a large ship to traverse the Atlantic Ocean and a smaller one to transport the supplies from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. Louis XIV gave La Salle the use of two ships, Le Joly and La Belle. Originally, La Belle was built as a kit, with the ship frames assigned to one of four quadrants and numbered sequentially so that the pieces could be assembled later. The pieces were intended to be loaded onto Le Joly for transport to North America, and then would be carried overland to the Mississippi River. At that point, La Salle's men would assemble the ship, and it would be used to carry the supplies to their final destination. At the king's urging, the expedition chose instead to sail directly to the Gulf of Mexico rather than to New France, eliminating the need for a ship to be built in the New World. As the Joly was already heavily laden, La Salle decided that the ship should be assembled in France and sailed across the ocean. Although there were some questions as to whether the ship would survive an ocean crossing, it was nevertheless assembled in France in less than two months and prepared for its journey.

In the late 17th century, the French shipbuilding industry had stagnated. In an effort to "invigorate" the industry, Secretary of State of the Navy, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, brought shipbuilders trained in the Mediterranean methods of shipbuilding to Rochefort, where the industry primarily used what was known as the Atlantic shipbuilding method. One of these transplanted shipwrights was Honoré Mallet, who had been raised in Toulon in the south of France. In the official order authorizing the building of La Belle, Mallet was listed as the master shipbuilder, and his son-in-law, Pierre Masson, was responsible for the ship design.

La Belle was a barque-longue, with three masts and a relatively shallow draft of about 8 feet (2 m). Her beam was officially 14 feet 9 inches (4.50 m), and she was 54 feet 4 inches (16.56 m) long with a cargo capacity of 40–45 tons. The ship was designed to be highly maneuverable, with the mainmast and foremast holding two sails each, while the mizzenmast supported a single triangular sail, and another small square sail hung from the bowsprit.

On July 24, 1684, La Salle left La Rochelle with four ships: the 36-gun man-of-war Le Joly, the 300-ton storeship L'Aimable, the barque La Belle, and the ketch St. Francois. The ships carried almost 300 people, including 100 soldiers, six missionaries, eight merchants, over a dozen women and children, and artisans and craftsmen. The St. Francois and its full load of supplies, provisions, and tools for the colony were captured by Spanish privateers in Santo Domingo. In late November 1684, the three remaining ships continued their search for the Mississippi River delta. Before they left, local sailors warned them that the Gulf currents flowed east, and would carry the ships toward the Florida straits unless they corrected for it. On December 18, the ships reached the Gulf of Mexico and entered waters that Spain claimed as their sole territory. None of the members of the expedition had ever been in the Gulf of Mexico or knew how to navigate it. The expedition was unable to find the Mississippi due to a combination of inaccurate maps, La Salle's previous miscalculation of the latitude of the mouth of the Mississippi River, and overcorrecting for the currents. Instead, they landed at Matagorda Bay in Spanish Texas in early 1685, 400 miles (644 km) west of the Mississippi.

Although La Belle was able to easily navigate the pass into the Bay, the Aimable was grounded on a sandbar. A bad storm prevented them from recovering more than food, cannons, powder, and a small amount of the merchandise from the ship, and by March 7 she had sunk. Beaujeu, having fulfilled his mission in escorting them, returned to France aboard the Joly in mid-March, leaving La Belle the only ship available to the remaining settlers.