Pierre Beaumarchais's first full-length drama, Eugénie, premiered at the Comédie-Française in 1767. The play established him as a dramatist before the later fame of Figaro. It belonged to a sentimental dramatic culture concerned with family, virtue and social injustice.

Eugénie prepared the way for Beaumarchais's sharper theatrical attacks on privilege. His drama influenced the stage world that poets and librettists used to explore class, feeling and pre-revolutionary discontent.