Champakalakshmi was born in 1932 to Pattammal (mother) and R. Rangachari (father) in a family from Srirangam in present day Tamil Nadu.

Her doctoral dissertation under historian T. V. Mahalingam, was on Vaishnava iconography in Tamil Nadu, a topic that she continued to research later into her career.

[8] As a part of this work, she brought together evidence from Tamil Sangam literature, the Bhakti movement of the Alvars, the Agama traditions, and combined this with extensive fieldwork to bring out the distinct medieval period iconography of the Vaishnavism faith.

[1][15] She taught many famous students at her time at JNU, including Kesavan Veluthat, Rajan Gurukkal, Manu V. Devadevan, and K. N. Ganesh [ml].

[6] She was a script consultant for Bharat Ek Khoj, a 1980s Indian television series based on Jawaharlal Nehru's The Discovery of India.