Rose Renaud's entries in both Fétis and Kutsch and Riemens state that she was born in Paris and was trained as a singer by the composer and voice teacher Louis-Augustin Richer.

She made her debut in 1781 while still a student singing arias by Antonio Sacchini, Gian Francesco de Majo and Henri-Montan Berton in a performance at the Concerts Spirituels.

[3][2] Thomas Jefferson saw "Mademoiselle Renaud" in Piccinni's opera Pénélope in Paris in 1785 and wrote to Abigail Adams that she "sings as no body ever sung before.

[10][11] In his 1880 Les Comédiens du roi de la troupe italienne, Émile Campardon likewise refers to three Renaud sisters.

Campardon refers to a second sister as "Mademoiselle Renaud cadette"[d] (no first name given) who made her debut on 22 October 1785 in the role of Babette in Nicolas Dezède's Le trois fermiers.

[12][13] Further support for the existence of the third and eldest sister comes from a March 1790 review in Le Moniteur Universel of Henri-Montan Berton's opera Les brouilleries, a comédie mêlée d'ariettes in three acts to a libretto by Loeillard d'Avrigny.

When illness prevented her from performing in its premiere at the Théâtre-Italien, Rose Renaud sang the role in her place to great success.

[6] According to the entry in Encyclopädie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften, both Rose and her elder sister were born in France but spent much of their childhood in Italy where their father worked as a violinist.