Michèle Perrein, whose real surname was Barbe, was born in Gironde and studied at the Collège de La Réole, followed by two years at the Faculty of Law in Bordeaux.

After she moved to Paris, she worked as a secretary by sending cars to South America while attending in parallel evening courses at the Centre de formation des journalistes.

Hélène Lazareff, director of the magazine Elle, found that her surname "Barbe" was difficult to wear, and thus she decided to take her mother's name "Perrein".

Married to Jacques Laurent, with whom she maintained an indefectible friendship until his death, she divorced a few years later to follow her own way of novelist.

She also produced reports, surveys, interviews or chronicles for Combat, Elle, Arts et Spectacles, Votre beauté and wrote some articles for Paris Match, Marie Claire, F Magazine [fr].