Her mother had been a deaconess before deciding to leave that life to marry, while her father was a school teacher at the time of her birth.

With a growing embrace of socialism, he later gave up that career and became a writer for the leftist periodical, Le Grutléen, for which the family moved to Lausanne.

Alice Rivaz' later writings are thought to reflect the conflict the couple experienced as a result of their differing points of view, with her mother's piety butting up against her father's political convictions.

After several years of work with the International Labour Organization she turned to writing, and became one of the foremost French language writers of Switzerland.

Rivaz began working on her first novel around 1937, which came to be titled Nuages dans la main (Clouds in your Hands), published in 1940.