Barbeau graduated from Mercy High School in Middleton, Connecticut.
from Southampton College (1991), and then moved to the Université libre de Bruxelles for one year.
Following her Ph.D. she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara until 2001 when she joined the faculty at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Her early work examined how protozoan grazers relieve iron limitation in phytoplankton.
[5] Her subsequent research has examined photochemical interactions with metal compounds[6][7] and iron limitation in the California Current.