The Franco-American composer Betsy Jolas was born in Paris in 1926. She began her training in the United States before returning to France to study with Darius Milhaud, Simone Plé-Caussade, and Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory. From 1971 to 1974, she replaced Messiaen at this institution, where she was appointed professor of analysis in 1975 and of composition in 1978. She also taught at several American universities, including Yale, Harvard, and Berkeley.

Winner of the Besançon International Conducting Competition in 1953, she has received numerous awards, including from the Copley Foundation in Chicago (1954), the American Academy of Arts (1973), and the Koussevitzky Foundation (1974), not to mention the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris (1981) and the Grand Prix de la SACEM (1982).

Her works, composed for a wide variety of ensembles, have been premiered by Domaine Musical, at the Tanglewood Festival, the Holland Festival, and the Royan Festival, among others, and are now performed all over the world by artists such as Élisabeth Chojnacka, Kent Nagano, William Christie, Claude Helffer, and Kim Kashkashian. In 2016, Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic premiered A Little Summer Suite. In 2019, Letters from Bachville received its world premiere by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelsons. The 2022/23 season saw the premiere of Latest by the Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Klaus Mäkelä, and Ces belles années... by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Rattle.

Her award-winning discography can be heard on the EMI, Adès, Erato, Barclay, and CRI labels.