Christophe Reutenauer was educated at the Université Paris in 1977 before going on to complete his doctorate thesis at the same institution in 1980. He was a former researcher at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in Paris and LITP (Laboratoire d'Informatique Théorique et de Programmation) from 1976 to 1990.
Reutenauer has, from 1985, been a professor at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal), and was also a professor at the University of Strasbourg between 1999 and 2001. Since then, he has been an invited professor or researcher at several universities, including Saarbrücken, Darmstadt, Roma, Napoli, Palermo, UQAM, San Diego (UCSD), Strasbourg, Montpelier, Bordeaux, Paris-Est, Nice, and the Mittag-Leffler Institute. He was also the Canadian Research Chair for "Algebra, Combinatorics and mathematical Informatics" between 2001 and 2015.