Franz Alekseevich Rubo was born on June 15, 1856, in Odessa to a family of immigrants from Marseille. His father, Honore Fortuna Alexis Rubo, was a bookseller, while his mother, Madeleine Rubo, sold dresses on Deribasovskaya and Richelievskaya streets before opening her own modeling house. His parents noticed their son's talent for drawing and sent him to the Odessa School of Drawing and Drafting, where he studied from 1865 to 1877. In 1878, Rubo entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied until 1883. He specialized in battle painting and created panoramas that combined painting with three-dimensional models, creating the illusion of historical events.

Rubo gained fame with the painting "Street in Yermolintsy of Podolsk Province," shown in 1883 at the Spring Exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. The Caucasus was one of his favorite themes. In 1886, he received a commission to create 19 paintings about the Caucasian Wars for the "Temple of Glory" in Tbilisi. Soon he conceived the panorama "Storming of the Aul of Akhulgo," which he created from 1889 to 1891. After its showing in Munich in 1891, the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts awarded him the title of professor and also honored him with the Order of Saint Michael.

In Munich, Rubo had the idea to capture the heroic past of the Russian people. In 1901, he received a commission to create a panorama in memory of the heroic defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War of 1853-1856. The panorama "Defense of Sevastopol" was completed in 1904 and delivered to Crimea. Its grand opening took place on May 14, 1905, in a specially constructed building designed by engineer Friedrich-Oskar Enberg.

From 1910 to 1912, Rubo worked on a panorama dedicated to the morning hours of September 7 (August 26 in the old style) 1812, when fierce battles were fought for the Semenovskaya Flashes and Raevsky's battery. The panorama was opened in a building on Chistoprudny Boulevard in Moscow. In 1962, the restored panorama by Rubo was placed in the Panorama Museum "Battle of Borodino." A memorial sign has been erected at Borodino Field at the site where the artist created his sketches.

In 1913, Franz Rubo finally settled in Germany and became the commissioner of the Russian section at the Munich Exhibition, for which he was awarded the Order of Saint Vladimir IV degree. Franz Rubo passed away on March 13 (according to other sources, March 11) 1928, in Munich and was buried in the grave of his daughter Anna at the cemetery of the Monastery Island of Fraueninsel.