Although she is best known as the favorite model of Édouard Manet, she was an artist in her own right who regularly exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon.

In 1860, at the age of sixteen, Meurent began modeling in the studio of Thomas Couture and she may have studied art at his atelier for women.

[3] She was particularly noticeable for her petite stature that earned her the nickname La Crevette (The Shrimp),[4] and for her red hair, which is depicted as very bright in Manet's watercolor copy of Olympia.

She also sang, reportedly performing at café-concerts,[6] a type of musical establishment associated with the Belle Époque in France,[7] which initially were held outdoors.

Meurent's name remains forever associated with Manet's masterpieces of 1863, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass) and Olympia, which feature nude portrayals of her.

At that time, she also modeled for Edgar Degas and the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens, both of whom were close friends of Manet's.

Meurent was a professional cancan dancer, and traveled to New York from Paris in September 1868 as part of a troupe of forty-eight artistes to perform in Jacques Offenbach operettas, including Geneviève de Brabant at the French Theater on Fifth Avenue, in which she was considered “one of the most audacious can-can dancers of the troupe.

Reportedly, in the late twentieth century elderly neighbors from that commune in Colombes recalled the last contents of the house, including a violin and its case, being burnt on a bonfire.

The Irish writer George Moore included Meurent as a character in his semi-fictional autobiography, Memoirs of My Dead Life (1906).

She is a recurring character in the Hugo Award nominated novelette “Colors of the Immortal Palette” by Caroline M. Yoachim.