Born in 1969, Barbara Abel has a passion for theater and literature. At the age of 23, she wrote a play, The Eskimo Who Gardened. In 2002, her first novel, Maternal Instinct, won the Cognac Prize. Her second novel, A Beautiful Age to Die, was adapted for France 2 in 2008, starring Emilie Dequenne and Marie-France Pisier. This was followed by five psychological thrillers between 2005 and 2013, including Behind the Hatred, which won the 2015 High School Students' Prize and was adapted into a film by Olivier Masset-Depasse under the title Duelles. This film was later remade in the United States as Mother’s Instinct, starring Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, released in 2024.

Between 2009 and 2014, she was a columnist for Cinquante degrés nord, a daily cultural magazine broadcast on Arte Belgique. She then joined Éditions Belfond, where she published four new thrillers, all later released in paperback by Éditions Pocket and translated into multiple languages.

She co-wrote Attraction with Sophia Perié, a Belgian series that won the Best Foreign Series award at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival in 2022. That same year, she published Les Fêlures with Éditions Plon. In 2024, she released a new thriller with Éditions Récamier, Comme si de rien n’était, and is currently working on the second season of Attraction, once again in collaboration with Sophia Perié.