As the presence of a baby interfered with her mother Julie's terrible and stressful life, Sarah was brought up in a pension, and later in a convent. A child of delicate health, she considered becoming a nun, but one of her mother's reputed lovers – the future Duc de Morny,Napoleon III's half-brother – decided that Sarah should be an actress. When she was 13, le Duc de Morny arranged for her to enter the Conservatoire, the government sponsored school of acting. She was not considered a particularly promising student, and, although she revered some of her teachers, she regarded the Conservatoire's methods as antiquated and too deeply steeped in tradition. Much of the uncertainty about Bernhardt's life arises because of her tendency to exaggerate and distort. Alexandre Dumas, fils described her as a notorious liar.

Sarah Bernhardt left the Conservatoire in 1862, and, thanks to the Duc de Morny‘s influence, was accepted by the national theatre company, the Comédie - Française, as a beginner on probation. During the obligatory three debuts required of probationers, her talents were scarcely noticed by critics. Her contract with Comédie - Française was canceled in 1863 after she slapped the face of a senior actress who had been rude to her younger sister.

For a time she found employment at the Théâtre du Gymnase - Dramatique where she was given the part of a silly Russian princess, further compromising her already volatile reputation. She decided to leave France, and soon ended up in Belgium, where she became the mistress of Henri, Prince de Ligne, and gave birth to their son, Maurice, in 1864. After Maurice's birth, the Prince proposed marriage, but his family forbade it and convinced Bernhardt to refuse and end their relationship.

In 1866 she signed a contract with Odéon Theatre in Paris. During six years of intensive work with a congenial company there, she gradually established her reputation. Her first success was as Anna Damby in the 1868 revival of Kean (by the novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas père). Bernhardt’s greatest triumph at the Odéon, however, came in 1869 when she portrayed the minstrel Zanetto in the one - act verse play Le Passant (“The Passerby”) by the young dramatist François Coppée, a part that she played again in a command performance before Napoleon III.

During this time that she acquired her famous coffin, in which she often slept in lieu of a bed – claiming that doing so helped her understand her many tragic roles. She made her fame on the stages of Europe in the 1870s, and was soon in demand all over Europe and in New York. She developed a reputation as a serious dramatic actress, earning the title "The Divine Sarah"; arguably, she was the most famous actress of the 19th century.

During the  Franco - Prussian War in 1870, she organized a military hospital in the Odéon. After the war, the reopened Odéon paid tribute to the 19th century writer Victor Hugo with a production of his verse-play Ruy Blas. As Queen Maria, Bernhardt charmed her audiences with lyrical quality of her voice. It was then that Hugo coined the phrase “golden voice,” though her critics usually called her voice “silvery” – as resembling the tone of a flute. In 1872 she left the Odéon and returned to Comédie - Française. One of her remarkable successes there was in the title role of Voltaire's Zaïre (1874). She even traveled to Cuba and performed in the Sauto Theater, in Matanzas, in 1887. She coached many young women in the art of acting, including actress and courtesan Liane de Pougy.