Ghost in October 1878 with an enrollment of 40 students and a faculty of six. In 1911, the college became the first Catholic university-level institution in Pennsylvania. It is named for an 18th-century governor of New France, Michel-Ange Duquesne de Menneville.

Duquesne has since expanded to over 9,300 graduate and undergraduate students within a self-contained 49 acre hilltop campus in Pittsburgh's Bluff