In 1698 Henry-Guillaume Adnet was apprenticed in Paris to Nicolas Archevêque at the age of fifteen. In 1703, his apprenticeship was transferred to Julien Levéque and he became master on 6 September 1712, sponsored by Abraham Lorin. On 3 July of that year he had married Marie-Françoise Letourneau. By 1715, he was living in the rue de Lamoignon although he had moved to the pont au Change by 1724, when he took Bernard Bellavoine as an apprentice. In 1734 he was described as marchand-orfèvre-joaillier following the death of his wife on 14 January. He married secondly on 15 September that year Catherine Massari d’Armancourt, daughter of the valet de chamber of the King of Denmark. From 1735 until 1740 he was engaged, with Pierre-Françoise Bonnestrenne, in the production of the pair of tureens designed by Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier for the Duke of Kingston. He took a second apprentice, Claude Sallé, in January 1743, by which time he was living in the rue des Poulies, and in the following year he took on Edme Moynat, nephew of the goldsmith Jean Moynat (q.v.), since Sallé had died. Henry Adnet himself had died by 4 October 1745, when the wardens of the guild declared his place vacant.