  In a companion paper (Arnouts et al. 2004) we presented new measurements of
the galaxy luminosity function at 1500 Angstroms out to z~1 using GALEX-VVDS
observations (1039 galaxies with NUV<24.5 and z>0.2) and at higher z using
existing data sets. In this paper we use the same sample to study evolution of
the FUV luminosity density. We detect evolution consistent with a
(1+z)^{2.5+/-0.7} rise to z~1 and (1+z)^{0.5+/-0.4} for z>1. The luminosity
density from the most UV-luminous galaxies (UVLG) is undergoing dramatic
evolution (x30) between 0<z<1. UVLGs are responsible for a significant fraction
(>25%) of the total FUV luminosity density at z<1. We measure dust attenuation
and star formation rates of our sample galaxies and determine the star
formation rate density as a function of redshift, both uncorrected and
corrected for dust. We find good agreement with other measures of the SFR
density in the rest ultraviolet and Halpha given the still significant
uncertainties in the attenuation correction.
