Hugh was born in 1052 at Châteauneuf-sur-Isère in Dauphiné, son of Odilon — a former soldier-knight who would himself enter religious life as a Carthusian monk in his old age. Educated at the cathedral school of Valence, Hugh became a canon of the Valence cathedral chapter.
In 1080, at the age of 28 — under the Gregorian-Reform programme of Pope St. Gregory VII — Hugh was appointed Bishop of Grenoble by the papal legate Bishop Hugh of Die, taking up the governance of the decayed Catholic see of Grenoble at the hour of the Gregorian-Reform crisis. The Diocese of Grenoble at his accession was in a state of extreme decay — the cathedral chapter largely abandoned, the episcopal revenues usurped by lay aristocrats, the clergy widely simoniacal and concubinous.
Hugh's fifty-two-year episcopate (1080–1132) — among the longest in medieval Catholic history — was devoted to the restoration of the Diocese of Grenoble. He recovered the alienated episcopal lands, reformed the cathedral chapter, established the diocesan synods and visitations, rebuilt the cathedral, and undertook the systematic Gregorian-Reform programme.
He is most renowned in Catholic history for his role as the episcopal benefactor of St. Bruno's Carthusian foundation: in 1084, Bruno (the former master of the Reims cathedral school who had undertaken the hermit-life) and his six companions arrived at Grenoble seeking hermit-cell-sites in the Dauphiné mountains.
Hugh — guided by the famous vision in which he had seen seven stars descending upon the mountainous region of the Chartreuse massif (the seven stars interpreted as the seven hermit-founders) — personally led Bruno and his companions to the rocky highlands of the Chartreuse massif north of Grenoble and granted them the site for the foundation of the Grande Chartreuse in 1084. The Carthusian Order — one of the principal contemplative orders of the Catholic Church to the present day — was institutionally enabled by Hugh's episcopal patronage.
Hugh maintained close personal relations with the Grande Chartreuse community for the five decades, undertaking frequent personal retreats at the hermitage. He died at Grenoble on April 1, 1132, and was canonized by Pope Innocent II just two years later on April 22, 1134 — one of the most rapidly canonized of the High Medieval Catholic saints.