Laforestorie was born in Port-au-Prince in the Republic of Haiti in 1837.  He trained as a sculptor in Paris under Francois Jouffroy and Charles-Auguste LeBourg and remained there until his death in 1894.  He exhibited at the annual Salons from 1867 to 1883 displaying portrait busts, genre statues and portrait medallions.  Little of his work survives, though an important statue in white marble “La vigne et l’ormeau (a bacchante)” sold for over £60,000 on Sotheby’s in 2001.