Dominique Voynet trained as a doctor, specifically as an anesthetist. During her studies in the late 1970s, she began participating in environmental activism. She fought against the establishment of nuclear reactors in Fessenheim and Malville, and the deforestation of the Vosges area on behalf of the Belfort Association for the Protection of Nature.
Politics tempted her at this time, however the issues that were dear to her – social efforts, peace and environmentalism – were not represented in France by any party at the time. For this reason, she became one of the founding members of The Greens in France.
She contested the 1995 presidential election which raised her public profile across all of France. In the first round of voting, she won 3.32% of the vote.
She was elected mayor of Montreuil sous bois in the Seine Saint Denis on the second round of Municipal elections, 16 March 2008, defeating Jean Pierre Brard longstanding communist mayor since 1984.
From 1997 to 2001 she was Minister of the Environment and Regional Planning under the Lionel Jospin government, she resigned on 9 July 2001 and was replaced by Yves Cochet. In 2004, she was elected senator for the Seine-Saint-Denis département. Since the 2008 French municipal elections she is the elected mayor of Montreuil.
Dominique Voynet was designated the Green candidate for the 2007 presidential election on 19 July 2006.[2] In the first round of the election, she garnered 576,666 votes (1.57%), failing to reach the second round.
On 25 November 2013 Voynet announced she would not seek a second term as mayor of Montreuil, complaining of the "degradation of political life"[This quote needs a citation] in Montreuil and elsewhere.[citation needed]
In a 2016 op-ed published by Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, Voynet joined sixteen other high-profile women from across the political spectrum – , including Élisabeth Guigou, Christine Lagarde, and Valérie Pécresse – in making a public vow to expose "all sexist remarks, inappropriate gestures and behaviour."[4]