Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain was a student of Bronisław Malinowski who worked in 1949 with Alfred Métraux, and participated in a UNESCO project in Haiti.

She was born on 6 November 1898 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and was the daughter of Georges Sylvain, Haitian activist and symbol of the resistance against the American Occupation, and of Eugénie Malbranche.

Besides her interest in Haitian folklore and social issues of the condition of women in Haiti and Africa, her research focused on the origins of Creole language, an idiom considered juvenile and worthless at that time.

She had chosen a difficult path but her work, disregarded by her peers, sparked the interest of famous Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski.

Comhaire-Sylvain also taught at the New School for Social Research in New York, was an early recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and was appointed a member of the United Nations trusteeship council for Togo and Cameroon under French administration.