Most memories are not formed in isolation, but are acquired during the recall of previous memories that help contextualize new incoming information. The hippocampus integrates new and old memories and, together with the medial prefrontal cortex, plays a crucial role in item recognition and spatial memory processing. However, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying item-context associations remain poorly understood. In this work, we investigated the influence of contextual information on object memory retention in male and female Wistar rats. Using a 90-s training protocol in the novel object recognition task, we found that animals trained with two identical novel objects in a familiar, featureless context formed a short-term object recognition memory (ORM) that decayed within hours. In contrast, training in a familiar, feature-rich context induced the formation of a long-term, context-dependent ORM that was impaired by optogenetic inhibition of the ventral hippocampal-prelimbic pathway during training. Long-term ORM was not observed when the habituation sessions occurred in a featureless context or after chemogenetic inhibition of hippocampal-prelimbic projections shortly after habituation in the featured context. Our findings suggest that environmental information can modulate object recognition memory formation and that ventral hippocampal-prelimbic interaction is crucial in this process.