Rhenium was discovered by the German chemists Ida Tacke-Noddack, Walter Noddack and Otto Carl Berg in 1925. They detected rhenium spectroscopically in platinum ores and in the minerals columbite ((Fe, Mn, Mg)(Nb, Ta)₂O₆), gadolinite ((Ce, La, Nd, Y)₂FeBe₂Si₂O₁₀) and molybdenite (MoS₂). Rhenium is present in these materials only in trace amounts. In 1928, Noddack and Berg were able to extract 1 gram of rhenium from 660 kilograms of molybdenite. Today, rhenium is obtained as a byproduct of refining molybdenum and copper.

Rhenium is used in flash lamps for photography and for filaments in mass spectrographs and ion gages, but is most frequently used as an alloying agent in tungsten and molybdenum and as a catalyst for performing certain reactions to a type of hydrocarbon known as an olefin.