Henri Pieper was born 1840 in Westfalen/Germany and there he learned his craft with a mechanical engineering company.
After his apprenticeship, he moved to Belgium in order to widen his knowledge and in 1866 he started an new workshop for tool machines for the mass production of gunparts. Later on a second factory followed in Nessonveaux, which was specialized in gun barrels.
When the company Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre (FN) established in 1889 in Herstal in order to compete with concurrents for the governmental order of the licensed production of Mauser rifles for the Belgian army, Henri Pieper was one of the strongest foundation shareholders.
The later years of his life, he worked on a construction for a gas sealed revolver, where however he did not took not care of his patents and he left it for Nagant to succeed with it. Also a number of revolving guns with lever action were made, but have not been very successful however.
Henri Pieper died in 1898.
The company was continued by his son Nicolas Pieper and was reorganized to SA Etablissements Pieper.
In 1905 the company again was reorganized, this time to Anciens Establishments Pieper.
These years Nicolas got also his first patents for a series of new selfloading pistols.
From 1907 to 1908, a complete new factory was built in Herstal and the old factories in Liege and Nessonveaux were closed.
It is estimatetd that Nicolas Pieper left the company around that time, and continued the production of his own pistols under his own name.
The new company grew fast, and in a publication of the trade-magazine from 1908 it is written , that around 1000 employees were working in gun production , a Spanish governmental order for the production of Bergmann-Bayard pistols was placed, and that plans existed for the mass production of an automatic rifle in caliber .22.
The company survived World War I and continued the production of all types of firearms in the time between WW1 and WW2.
During the World War II, it became somewhat quiet about the company Pieper, despite the big arms demand of that time.
After World War II the production however was started again with sporting arms, shotguns and rifles. Pistols were not produced any longer.
The market presence of the Pieper pistols strongly decreased in the 1920ies. Probably because of the more complicated and therefore more costly production in relation to the the innumerable cheaper models flooding the market.
Some new designed models could not stop this trend any longer.