The daughter of a merchant of fabrics of Alsatian origin, she was the niece, on the maternal side, of Julien Cain, who was administrator general of the Bibliothèque nationale de France from 1930 to 1964.

It is also in Algiers that she created in 1943 with the writer Robert Aron the magazine La Nef [fr], which would be the first to be published in Paris the day after the Libération of France and of which she assured the direction until her death.

Numerous issues of La Nef were milestones, such as those devoted to contemporary political and social problems (the Algerian war, police, Americans, psychoanalysis, prostitution, women, Justice, advertising, opinion polls, freedoms etc.).

Her eight novels (to which were added seven short stories in a posthumous work) reflect less her great familiarity with political circles than "her intimate curiosity about things of the heart" (B. Poirot-Delpech).

The psychological complexity of the subjects tackled, such as delirious jealousy, suicide, parricide or ill-assumed homosexuality, was "compensated by an extreme concern for clarity and a kind of optimistic candor".