Jean-Pierre Lévy was born into a Jewish family in France in 1911. He worked for a jute weaving firm until joining the French Army on the outbreak of the Second World War.

Lévy avoided capture when France was defeated in June 1940. He moved to Lyons where he joined the French Resistance. Eventually he helped form the Francs-Tireur. In December, 1941, the group began publishing the underground newspaper, the Franc-Tireur.

In 1942 Lévy entered talks with Jean Moulin about the possibility of uniting all the resistance groups working in France. After much discussion Moulin persuaded the eight major resistance groups to form the Conseil National de la Resistance (CNR). This included Lévy's Francs-Tireur as well as Combat (Henry Frenay), Liberation (Emmanuel d'Astier), Front National (Pierre Villon), Comité d'Action Socialiste (Pierre Brossolette) and Armée Secrete (Charles Delestraint).

The French police became suspicious of Lévy and he was arrested and interrogated three times and in 1942 he went into hiding. He visited General Charles De Gaulle in London in September 1943. However, soon after arriving back in France he was arrested and imprisoned in the Santé.

Lévy was freed by the Francs-Tireur in June 1944. He refused to enter politics after the war and became a civil servant instead. Jean-Pierre Lévy died in 1996.