In 1848,Carl Remigius Fresenius opened a private laboratory in a house at Steinhohl No. 11 (later Kapellenstrasse) with five students and an assistant, Dr. Emil Erlenmeyer (1825-1909). The laboratory expanded rapidly and was soon extended by the purchase of the house at Kapellenstraße 13. Increasingly frequented by industrialists, miners and traders, the importance of the institute for the Nassau authorities also grew steadily. For example, Fresenius was consulted by the College of Finance in matters relating to the bottling, filling and shipping of mineral water, the use of mining products and the testing of grape must. The Criminal Court also used his help in all cases brought before the court that concerned chemical issues. In addition, the administrative offices, the municipal authorities and the natural history association, the trade association, the association of Nassau farmers and foresters and the association for Nassau antiquity and historical research also made inquiries. The laboratory was also used to check the articles to be published in Fresenius' newly founded Zeitschrift für analytische Chemie. Further fields of activity opened up in the 1860s through close cooperation with the newly established oenological experimental station and the addition of a hygienic-bacteriological department in 1884. Fresenius had divided the management between his two sons Remigius Heinrich Fresenius and Theodor Wilhelm Fresenius and his son-in-law Ernst Hintz in good time. As a result, the company continued to grow steadily after his death.

Only the effects of the First World War and its consequences put an end to the positive development and worsened the economic situation. At the beginning of the new century, the grandsons of the company founder, Remigius and Ludwig Fresenius, joined the laboratory business and took over the management in 1920. During the Nazi era, the absence of foreign business partners could still be compensated for on a national level. However, the effects of the Second World War again hit the company hard. Parts of the laboratory buildings were destroyed in a bombing raid in 1945, and the period of new beginnings demanded a great deal of improvisational talent from the employees of the Chemical Laboratory. The laboratory received its first orders after the end of the war from the American occupying army. It was also entrusted with monitoring drinking water in Wiesbaden, as the state monitoring offices had been destroyed. Gradually, orders from authorities and food manufacturers were added. Fresenius became an important consulting partner for the German beverage industry associations and the Fresenius analysis printed on the label became the seal of quality for many mineral waters. By this time, the great-grandsons Remigius (*1931) and Wilhelm Friedrich Nils Remigius Fresenius had joined the company and the testing laboratory developed rapidly. In 1962, the teaching department was separated from the testing laboratory and continued as "Gemeinnützige Chemieschule Fresenius GmbH".

In 1972, Ludwig Fresenius (*1943), the fifth generation, took over the management and brought about massive changes in the company: the testing department of Chemisches Laboratorium Fresenius was transformed into "Institut Fresenius Chemische und Biologische Laboratorien GmbH", and in 1975 the institute moved to Taunusstein-Neuhof. Since the 1980s, Institut Fresenius has focused not only on its traditional fields of work but also on engineering services in environmental protection and consulting in related sectors such as contaminated site remediation, product development, identity, purity and approval testing and drug testing. Fresenius developed into the German market leader in the field of quality and environmental analysis. After the reunification of the two German states, the "Laboratory for Applied Solid State Analysis" in Dresden was taken over. Fresenius is considered the market leader in non-medical laboratory services in Germany. Institut Fresenius Chemische und Biologische Laboratorien AG" has been a subsidiary of SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance) in Geneva since 2004.