[2] An artist from an early age, she studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs and was an apprentice to the neo-impressionist painters Maurice Denis, Paul Signac and Édouard Vuillard.

[3] In 1937, Madeleine moved to Barcelona, where she painted a series of portraits of anarchist militiamen;[2] she then returned to Paris, where she worked as an art teacher at a primary school.

After the defeat of the Spanish Republicans in 1939, she went to the France-Spain border and provided aid to refugees, depicting the internment camps in her drawings.

[1] Following the end of World War II, Lamberet travelled to Bulgaria in order to help Bulgarian anarchists flee repression by the communist government.

[2] She became closely involved in the activities of the exiled Spanish and Bulgarian anarchist movements, through which she joined the Confédération Nationale du Travail (CNT), the French branch of the International Workers' Association (IWA).