Vanessa Springora attended the Lycée Fénelon in Paris and studied literature at the Université Paris-Sorbonne. In 2003, she completed a postgraduate course at the Institut national de l'audiovisuel and made a documentary film. Since 2006, she has worked as an editor and publishing assistant at Éditions Julliard. Since 2010, she has also edited the series "Nouvelles Mythologies" edited by Mazarine Pingeot and Sophie Nordmann at Éditions Robert Laffont. Since December 2019, she has been publishing director at Julliard.

At the beginning of 2020, Springora published an autobiographical book entitled Le Consentement ('The Consent'). In it, she accused the writer Gabriel Matzneff of sexually abusing her when she was 14 years old. She accused the French literary establishment of tolerance or even complicity in Matzneff's crimes. The book caused a huge stir, not least in the wake of the #MeToo movement.