Brigitte Reimann wrote her first amateur play at the age of fifteen. In 1950 she was awarded the first prize in an amateur drama competition by the Berlin theater Volksbühne. After graduating with the Abitur, Reimann worked as teacher, bookseller and reporter. . After a miscarriage in 1954, Reimann attempted suicide. In 1960 she started to work at the brown coal mine Schwarze Pumpe, where she and her second husband Siegfried Pitschmann headed a circle of writing workers. There, she wrote the narrative Ankunft im Alltag, which is regarded as a masterpiece of socialist realism. She received the Heinrich Mann prize in 1964.

When troops of the Warsaw Pact states invaded the ?SSR on August 20, 1968 as a reaction to liberalisations during the Prague Spring, Reimann refused to sign the declaration by the East German Writers' Association approving of the measure.

On February 22, 1973, Brigitte Reimann died of cancer at the age of 39.

During the last ten years of her life Reimann worked at the novel Franziska Linkerhand. At the time of her death, the last, fifteenth chapter had just been started. In the following year the novel was published nonetheless, although in a heavily censored way. Not until 1998 was the uncensored version published.