Marlene Dumas was born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa. She began painting in 1973 and showed her political concerns and reflections on her identity as a white woman of Afrikaans descent in South Africa. She studied art at the University of Cape Town from 1972 to 1975, and psychology at the University of Amsterdam in 1979 and 1980. Currently, she lives and works in the Netherlands and is one of the country's most prolific artists. She is also widely regarded as one of the most influential painters working today.

With many of her paintings she depicts her friends, models, and prominent political figures. Her paintings are seen as portraits but they do not represent people but an emotional state that one could be in. Her art focuses on more serious issues and themes such as sexuality and race, guilt and innocence, violence and tenderness.

Dumas taught at the Academie voor Beeldende Vorming (ABV) in Tilburg, Academie voor Kunst en Industrie (AKI) in Enschede and Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. The sale of Dumas' Jule-die Vrou (1985), positioned Dumas as one of three living female artists to trade for over $1 million.