At the age of six months Fenley and her family moved to Ithaca, NY where her father was a professor of the Agricultural Extension at Cornell University.
Fenley attended high school in Spain, and in 1971, at 16, returned to the US to enter Mills College from which she received her BA in Dance in 1975.
[2],[1][2] Upon arriving in New York City in 1975, Fenley trained with Merce Cunningham, Viola Farber and studied at the Erick Hawkins School.
[3][5] In 1987 she disbanded her ensemble and made a shift to performing solo works, often in collaboration with visual artists including Roy Fowler, Keith Haring, Jene Hightstein, Richard Long, Kiki Smith, Keith Sonnier, Merrill Wagner and composers such as John Bischoff, Alvin Curran, Anthony Davis, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Pauline Oliveros, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and Laetitia Sonami [.
[2] It was during this period that she created her work, State of Darkness (1988), which was commissioned by the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C. Set to Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, this 35 minute solo received critical acclaim for both its physical rigor, innovative use of Stravinsky's score and intense sense of ritual drama.
Her works have been presented in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, South America, Europe, Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mexico [8].
[11] Other recent works in include: Archeology in Reverse with artist Catherine Wagner and Artifact in 2018, Untitled (Haiku) and Some phrases I'm hoping Andy would like in 2019,[12] and The Cut Outs (Matisse) in 2020 with longtime collaborator and poet Bob Holman.
[13] In 2020, Fenley revisited her 1988 work State of Darkness, setting the solo on Jared Brown, Lloyd Knight, Sara Mearns, Shamel Pitts, Annique Roberts, Cassandra Trenary and Michael Trusnovec.
Fenley received a 2000 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award,[15] The Greenwich Collection, LIATIS, the Asian Cultural Council and the Cadbury Trust.
She worked as a Resident Artist for the Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, The American Academy in Rome, Bard College, The Hotchkiss School, The Asian Cultural Council in Tokyo, Yaddo, the Bogliasco Foundation, Djerassi, Bloedel Reserve, Marble House Project and Harvard University.