[5] Marie Laforêt was born on 5 October 1939 at Soulac-sur-Mer, in the Médoc region of France, to Jean Doumenach and Marie-Louise (née Saint Guily).

[5][8] After becoming more religious and having considered becoming a nun, Laforêt continued her secondary studies at the Lycee La Fontaine and Cours Raymond Rouleau in Paris.

Her career began accidentally in 1959 when she replaced her sister at the last minute in the French radio talent contest Naissance d'une étoile (Birth of A Star) and won.

[9] Noticed then by Raymond Rouleau, she attended his theater classes as Director Louis Malle cast the young starlet in Liberté, the film he was shooting at the time but which he finally abandoned.

The original soundtrack of her second film, 1961's Saint Tropez Blues, where she sang the title song accompanied by her childhood friend Jacques Higelin at the guitar was released in 1960.

Laforêt had worked with many important French composers, musicians and lyricists, such as André Popp and Pierre Cour, who provided her with a panoply of colorful, sophisticated orchestral arrangements, featuring dozens of musical instruments and creating a variety of sounds, sometimes almost Medieval, Renaissance or Baroque, other times quite modern and innovative.

After being disillusioned by the music industry at the time, Laforêt moved to Switzerland where she was married to Swiss doctor Pierre Meyer in 1981 for a year.

[12] Marie Laforêt died on 2 November 2019 in Genolier, Switzerland, a small town in the Nyon district near Geneva, from the consequences of a primary bone cancer.

Her other folk recordings include: Viens sur la montagne,[10] a 1964 French adaptation of the African-American spiritual Go Tell It on the Mountain recorded by American folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary the previous year; Coule doux (Hush-a-Bye), another Peter, Paul and Mary song; 1966's Sur les chemins des Andes, a French version of the traditional Peruvian El Cóndor Pasa; and La voix du silence, a 1966 cover of American duo Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence".

The melody of the latter song gained fame in the former Soviet Union as the background music to the Vremya television news programme's weather forecast in the 1970s.

[14] The quiet, bittersweet and minimally arranged ballad Je voudrais tant que tu comprennes (1966), composed by Francis Lai, is Laforêt's favorite.

Laforêt's 1977 hit "Il a neigé sur Yesterday", perhaps her most well-known recording, was penned by musician Jean-Claude Petit, and lyricist Michel Jourdan, (famous for his work with Dalida, Nana Mouskouri, Michel Fugain and Mike Brant) and who had written the words for earlier Laforêt songs, such as "Les vendanges de l'amour" and "L'orage".