The use of fat as an autologous filling material dates back at least a century. In the 1970s and early 1980s, many plastic surgeons still used eyelid fat from blepharoplasty to fill in glabellar or even nasolabial fold lines through small slit incisions. The results were uniformly temporary, with full resorption after six to thirteen months. Injectable autologous fat grafting really has its roots closely tied to the introduction of modern liposuction. It is unclear who may have been the first to use fat harvested from liposuction, place it in a syringe, and reinject it back into the tissues. There were certainly many who started about the same time. In the early days of liposuction, contour deformities were quite common, and reinjecting fat was an obvious and, as it turns out, the most practical treatment option.

The idea of harvesting fat with a small cannula, in a relatively small syringe for reinjection, probably occurred to several physicians at about the same time. But it is Pierre Fournier who certainly deserves most of the credit for popularizing this procedure starting around 1984–1985. Fournier used a very simple technique of harvesting the fat with a 5- to 10-cc syringe fitted with a 14-gauge cannula, and after letting the fat settle and discarding the separated serum, he reinjected it as “small strands of spaghetti” through a 14- or 16-gauge needle. He used it primarily for nasolabial folds, glabellar frown lines, and marionette lines and was also beginning to place it in hands.