Born as love child of a French scholar and a French-American priest in Brussels, Colette Inez spent her early years in a Belgian Catholic orphanage, arriving in America as an apparent orphan at the age of eight at the start of World War II, the next few years she lived with an abusive adoptive family on Long Island, New York.

She graduated from Hunter College.

Her first book, The Woman Who Loved Worms (1972), was adapted into a dance performance by the Saeko Ichinohe Dance Company. Five of her poems were used as the lyrics of a song cycle, Miz Inez Sez, featured on Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Del Tredici’s album Secret Music (2002) : "Alive and Taking Names," "The Happy Child," "Good News! Nilda is Back," and "Chateauneuf du Pape, the Pope's Valet Speaks" (all from her 1993 collection Getting Under Way: New and Selected Poems), as well as "The Beckoning" (first published in the New Orleans Review in 1999).

She has taught at Bucknell University, Ohio University, Denison University, State University of New York (Stony Brook), Hunter College, University of Tennessee (Knoxville), The New School and started teaching at Columbia University in 1983 starting the Columbia University School of General Studies and subsequently as a lecturer at University's the Undergraduate Writing Program.

Over the years, she has published over nine books, as well as several essays and short stories in journals. Her work has been part of several anthologies . Her Lyrics and Libretto, have set to music by Mira J. Spektor, for Villa Diodatti (2008), directed by Rob Urbinati

She lives in New York City with her husband, who is a freelance writer