Over her career, she was associated with many notable European artists of her era, including Kathleen Scott, Adrienne Gorska, Le Corbusier, and the architect Jean Badovici, with whom she was romantically involved and who taught her architecture and collaborated with her on various buildings.

Gray was born Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith on 9 August 1878 at Brownswood, an estate near Enniscorthy in County Wexford in the south-east of Ireland.

[3] Further on in her carer, she created the Brick Screen which used the Japanese Lacquer techniques she learnt at the Slade School of Art In 1902, Gray moved to Paris with Kathleen Bruce and Jessie Gavin.

[4][6] Gray was so dedicated to learning the trade that she suffered the so-called lacquer disease, a painful rash on her hands, but that did not stop her from working.

[10] The chair's shape is reminiscent of the voluptuous figures of women in renaissance paintings, while the geometry calls back to the ideals of Werkbund.

[11] The Pirogue Day Bed was gondola-shaped and finished in patinated bronze lacquer, and is inspired by Polynesian dugout canoes.

[3] Jean Désert sold the abstract geometric rugs designed by Gray and woven in Evelyn Wyld's workshops.

This reflects her growing interest in the work of Le Corbusier and other Modernists, who valued utility and mathematical principles over ornamentation.

[2] Because a foreigner in France couldn't wholly own property, Gray bought the land and put it in Badovici's name, making him her client on paper.

[6] However, Gray was critical of the avant-garde movement's focus on the exterior of buildings, writing "The interior plan should not be the incidental result of the facade; it should lead to a complete harmonious, and logical life.

[3] She created a tea trolley with a cork surface, to reduce the rattling of cups, and positioned mirrors so a visitor could see the back of their head.

[19] At the entrance of E-1027 Gray created a celluloid niche for hats with net shelves to allow a clear view without the risk of dust settling.

[15] The name Tempe à Pailla is translated into English as "Time and Hay" and references a Provençal proverb that say both are needed for figs to ripen.

[21] Much of the furniture was transformable, including expandable wardrobes and a dining banquette that both folded for storage and could be turned into an occasional table.

[21] With Tempe à Pailla, Gray moved away from Le Corbusier's free plan ideal and created more separate spaces while maximizing the house's panoramic views.

[23] In 2013, The Observer critic Rowan Moore called it an “act of naked phallocracy” by a man asserting “his dominion, like a urinating dog, over the territory”, the nature of this "spasm of comic brutality" being "hotly debated" as "an act of vandalism... infringement of the original architect's intellectual property... a bravura improvement" or "just plain snobbery and sexism".

[26] In 1920 Harper's Bazaar, an article dedicated to keeping record of Gray's lacquer work stated "Laquer Walls and Furniture Displace Old Gods in Paris and London.

[22] Renewed interest in Gray's work began in 1967 when historian Joseph Rykwert published an essay about her in the Italian design magazine Domus.

[26] At a Paris auction of 1972, Yves Saint Laurent bought Le Destin and revived interest in Gray's career.

[1] In 1973 Gray signed a contract to reproduce the Bibendum chair and many of her pieces for the first time, with Aram Designs Ltd, London.

[1] She is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, but because her family omitted to pay the licence fee her grave is not identifiable.

She mixed in the lesbian circles of the time, being associated with Romaine Brooks, Loie Fuller, Marie-Louise Damien (a singer with the stage name Damia), and Natalie Barney.

According to Reyner Banham, "[Eileen Gray's work] was, also, in its day, part of a personal style and philosophy of design which was, by the look of things, too rich for the punditry to take.

And if the punditry didn't publish you, particularly in the great canon-defining compendia of the thirties, forties and fifties you dropped off the record, and ceased to be a part of the universe of scholarly discourse.

[37] A 2020 short film by Michel Pitiot, In Conversation with Eileen Gray, was based on an unreleased 1973 interview with Andrew Hodgkinson.

In 2024 a Swiss documentary by Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub with the title Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea was screened at the Zurich Film Festival.