Jeanne Moreau was born in Paris to a French father and an English mother of Irish descent.

She studied at the Conservatoire in Paris. In 1947, she made her theatre debut at the Avignon Festival of Theatre. By her twenties, Moreau was already one of France's leading stage actresses at the Comédie-Française.

In the late 1950s, after making many mainstream films, including several successes, she made Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) with first-time director Louis Malle. Largely thanks to that film, she went on to work with many of the best known New Wave and avant garde directors.

Francois Truffaut's explosive New Wave film Jules and Jim (1962) is centered on her magnetic starring role, and is perhaps her most famous film. She has also appeared with a number of other notable directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni (La Notte), Jean-Luc Godard (Une femme est une femme/A Woman is a Woman), Orson Welles (The Immortal Story), Luis Buñuel (Le journal d'une femme de chambre/Diary of a Chambermaid), and Philippe Agostini (Le dialogue des Carmelites/Dialogue of the Carmélites).

She has also co-produced several films, including Jules and Jim, and has directed films herself. Throughout her life she has maintained friendships with prominent writers such as Jean Cocteau and Marguerite Duras.

She remains one of France's most accomplished and diversely talented actresses. As a singer, she once appeared at the Carnegie Hall in New York with Frank Sinatra.