Nikolai Mavrenkov already created a good description of the problem on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36893449/textarea-placeholder-isnt-shown-in-ie-11-being-rendered-using-react

I just can confirm it breaks in IE11, but works in IE10 (and other browsers) with React v15.0.2.

this._namespaceURI = null;
  this._renderedChildren = null;
  this._previousStyle = null;
  this._previousStyleCopy = null;
  this._hostNode = null;
  this._hostParent = null;
  this._rootNodeID = 0;
  this._domID = 0;
  this._hostContainerInfo = null;
  this._wrapperState = null;
  this._topLevelWrapper = null;
  this._flags = 0;
  if (__DEV__) {
    this._ancestorInfo = null;
    setAndValidateContentChildDev.call(this, null);
  }
}
ReactDOMComponent.displayName = 'ReactDOMComponent';
ReactDOMComponent.Mixin = {
  /**
   * Generates root tag markup then recurses. This method has side effects and
   * is not idempotent.
   *
   * @internal
   * @param {ReactReconcileTransaction|ReactServerRenderingTransaction} transaction
   * @param {?ReactDOMComponent} the parent component instance
   * @param {?object} info about the host container
   * @param {object} context
   * @return {string} The computed markup.
   */