Son of Antoine Corbin (1835-1901), founder of Magasins Réunis, Eugène Corbin shared the management of the company with his brother-in-law Charles Masson (1858-1929).

A great patron of the arts and artists, Corbin was passionate about art in all its forms: ancient art, contemporary art, decorative art, painting, sculpture... He was also a great sponsor. For the expansion of the Magasins Réunis in 1906, Corbin called on the architect Lucien Weissenburger - who had already been commissioned many times by the Corbin family - and brought in Louis Majorelle, Jacques Gruber, Victor Prouvé, Alfred Finot, Jules Cayette and Henri Suhner. These were also the artists that he had working, as well as several members of his family, for the design of his properties in Nancy and Paris.

He collected many works by École de Nancy artists for his own pleasure. In 1935, he bequeathed a huge part of his collection (759 works in all) which was displayed in a wing of the Galeries Poirel until 1939, when it was crated and sent to the south of France. On their return in 1945, the works were stored in Nancy’s former abattoirs. Some of the works were damaged by the floods of December 1947. The following month, the works were returned to the Poirel galleries, but were no longer shown to the public. The solution was found by the town council, which bought the former Corbin property (part of the garden and the house on rue Blandan), and installed part of the collections there in 1951-1952, with a partial opening to the public in 1954. Part of the house was still occupied by Mrs. Eugène Corbin until her death in 1961. The plaque "Ville de Nancy - Musée de l'École de Nancy - Eugène Corbin" at the entrance to the museum is a reminder of the patron’s generosity.

Eugène Corbin died in 1952, but his personality is still vivid in the memory of the people of Nancy at the time. When the museum opened, the press recalled the deeply human personality of the businessman and his generous patronage of artists in Lorraine and the city of Nancy : "And so it was that, loving his city, and choosing from his immense collections, [...] he selected the constituent parts of a museum of the École de Nancy, which he donated to the City of Nancy. This museum was unique in that it included a sample of all the means of artistic expression [...] of a movement whose lifeblood translated into fertility and diversity”. (Gabriel Bichet, L'Est républicain, October 11, 1960).

Close to the École de Nancy’s teaching and dissemination concerns, Eugène Corbin took part in the creation of several competitions organized by the École de Nancy and, in 1909, founded the magazine Art et Industrie with the collaboration of Émile Goutière-Vernolle.