The attacker, a 36-year-old man from Tunisia, was shot dead by police, local media reported.
An investigation into the murder of terrorism as a possible motive for the attack has been launched.
Police detained and interrogated three people known to the attacker and searched two apartments.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanen, who visited the crime scene, said security would be stepped up at police stations across the country.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter that France would never give up the fight against Islamic terrorism.
A source close to the investigation told the AFP news agency that the attacker had shouted “Allah Akbar” (“Allah is great”).
Chief Counter-Terrorism Prosecutor Jean-François Richter confirmed that the attacker’s statements indicated terrorism as a motive.
The 49-year-old police officer and mother of two returned from a lunch break when she was attacked and struck in the neck. Shortly afterwards, the woman died of her injuries.
The attacker arrived in France illegally in 2009, but then obtained a residence permit, a source told police. He had arrived recently in Rambouillet, about 60 kilometers from Paris. The man had not previously come to the attention of the police.
Over the past year, there have been a number of attacks in France that have raised concerns about the spread of radical Islam in France and immigration.
In September, a Pakistani with a butcher knife injured two people in Paris near the former office of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. The magazine published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which is considered an insult in much of the Islamic world.
On October 16, a young Chechen immigrant born in Moscow murdered Samuel Pati, a Parisian suburban teacher, who had shown cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to students in a free speech class.
On October 29, a Tunisian armed with a knife killed three people in the Basilica of Our Lady in Nice. One victim had his throat cut.
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