Born in the Hérault region to a coal miner father, Thérèse Bonnelalbay moved to Marseille at the age of 19, where she worked as a nurse. A few years later, she married a schoolteacher. The couple regularly attended meetings of the Communist Party; she began drawing in 1963 during these party gatherings. In 1975, she settled with her husband and two children in Ivry-sur-Seine. She disappeared on the night of February 16, 1980; her body was found drowned in the Seine River near Suresnes.

Thérèse Bonnelalbay's drawings trace a kind of alphabet made up of scratches. In her early work, her drawings were quite figurative, evoking profiles and plant forms. Composed of the same basic elements, they later became increasingly abstract. His works, appreciated by Jean Dubuffet, are notably preserved in the Collection de l’art brut in Lausanne and at the LaM in Villeneuve d’Ascq.