Growing up in an affluent family, her desire to work as an artist was an unusual path for the times, but from a young age, Malebranche wanted to learn painting.

As her father was appointed as the Haitian envoy to Cuba, Malebranche continued her studies at the Ciriulo da Bella Artes in Havana, obtaining her baccalauréat in 1941.

[1] In 1945,[2] commissioned with Gérald Bloncourt and James Peterson through the Centre d’Art, Malebranche created murals for the chapel of Sainte-Marie-Thérèse in Pétion-Ville.

[1][3] Other of her works featured black and indigenous women from Cuba and Mexico, presenting an honest depiction of the human condition and difficulty of their lives.

She avoided colorful exotic scenes of markets and musicians, voodoo or heroic icons, instead focusing on the lives of poverty stricken peasants or urban poor women.