Customizing react-leaflet marker icons by using font awesome

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Here is how you can use font-awesome icons as markers.

1. Add font-awesome CDN to your index.html

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.3.1/css/all.css" integrity="sha384-mzrmE5qonljUremFsqc01SB46JvROS7bZs3IO2EmfFsd15uHvIt+Y8vEf7N7fWAU" crossorigin="anonymous">

2. Use divIcon along with renderToStaticMarkup from react-dom/server to generate icon for marker. And pass this divIcon to Marker as a icon prop.

   import React, { Component } from 'react';
   import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
   import { renderToStaticMarkup } from 'react-dom/server';
   import { divIcon } from 'leaflet';
   import { Map, TileLayer, Marker, Popup } from 'react-leaflet';
   
   import './styles.css';
   
   class App extends Component {
     state = {
       lat: 51.505,
       lng: -0.091,
       zoom: 13,
     };
   
   render() {
       const position = [this.state.lat, this.state.lng];
       const iconMarkup = renderToStaticMarkup(<i className=" fa fa-map-marker-alt fa-3x" />);
       const customMarkerIcon = divIcon({
         html: iconMarkup,
       });
   
       return (
         <Map center={position} zoom={this.state.zoom}>
           <TileLayer
             attribution="&amp;copy <a href=&quot;http://osm.org/copyright&quot;>OpenStreetMap</a> contributors"
             url="https://{s}.tile.osm.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png"
           />
           <Marker position={position} icon={customMarkerIcon}>
             <Popup>
               A pretty CSS3 popup. <br /> Easily customizable.
             </Popup>
           </Marker>
         </Map>
       );
     }
   }
   
   const rootElement = document.getElementById('root');
   ReactDOM.render(<App />, rootElement);
   

3. Override divIcon default style by adding the following class to your css file

   .leaflet-div-icon {
       background: transparent;
       border: none;
   }  
   

   • Here is a working example of the same:
     https://codesandbox.io/s/4ry180jl34

For those who already use the React components of Fontawesome (FontAwesomeIcon), there is a solution that does not require importing via CDN again. It uses the same principles of Murli's answers, but instead of adding <i className=" fa fa-map-marker-alt fa-3x" />, you can convert the FontAwesomeIcon component to html and pass that into the html attribute of the divIcon. It would look like this (adapted the example of the accepted answer):

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import ReactDOMServer from 'react-dom/server';
import Leaflet from 'leaflet'
import { Map, TileLayer, Marker, Popup } from 'react-leaflet';
import { FontAwesomeIcon } from '@fortawesome/react-fontawesome';

import './styles.css';

// FontAwesome requirements
import { faUserAstronaut } from '@fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons'
library.add(faUserAstronaut)

class App extends Component {
  state = {
    lat: 51.505,
    lng: -0.091,
    zoom: 13,
  };

  render() {
    const position = [this.state.lat, this.state.lng];
    const iconHTML = ReactDOMServer.renderToString(<FontAwesomeIcon icon='user-astronaut' />)
    const customMarkerIcon = new Leaflet.DivIcon({
      html: iconHTML,
    });

    return (
      <Map center={position} zoom={this.state.zoom}>
        <TileLayer
          attribution="&amp;copy <a href=&quot;http://osm.org/copyright&quot;>OpenStreetMap</a> contributors"
          url="https://{s}.tile.osm.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png"
        />
        <Marker position={position} icon={customMarkerIcon}>
          <Popup>
            A pretty CSS3 popup. <br /> Easily customizable.
          </Popup>
        </Marker>
      </Map>
    );
  }
}

const rootElement = document.getElementById('root');
ReactDOM.render(<App />, rootElement);