Simone Fattal was born in Damascus, Syria, and raised in Lebanon, where she studied philosophy at the École des Lettres in Beirut. She then moved to Paris, where she continued her philosophical pursuits at the Sorbonne.

In 1969, she returned to Beirut and began working as a visual artist, exhibiting her paintings until the start of the Lebanese Civil War. She left Lebanon in 1980, and settled in California, where she founded the Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative and experimental literary work. In 1988 she enrolled at the Art Institute of San Francisco, which prompted a return to her artistic practice and a newfound dedication to sculpture and ceramics.

Fattal currently lives in Paris. Her work is included in several public collections, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, Marrakech; the Sursock Museum, Beirut; the Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah and the National Museum of Qatar, Doha.

Recent solo exhibitions of her work include: Venice Biennale (2022); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2022); MoMA PS1, New York (2019); Bergen Kunsthall (2019); Pinault Collection, Punta della Dogana, Venice (2019); Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakech (2018); the Rochechouart Departmental Museum of Contemporary Art (2017) and Sharjah Art Foundation (2016).