Prasquier was born as Ryszard Praszkier in Gdańsk, Poland, on 7 July 1945 to Holocaust survivors who wanted to emigrate to the United States after the 1946 Kielce pogrom against Jews in Poland, but decided to settle in France. After his schooling at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris and studies in medicine which he completed with a Ph.D, Richard Prasquier became a cardiologist and later the director of the Hôpital Beaujon in Clichy. In 1989, he was a founding member of the Association des médecins d’origine polonaise de France, a grouping of French doctors of Polish origin.[2]