It was commonplace for daughters of bourgeois families to receive art education, so Berthe and her sisters Yves and Edma were taught privately by Geoffroy-Alphonse Chocarne and Joseph Guichard. The family moved to Paris in 1852, when Morisot was a child. She had two older sisters, Yves (1838–1893) and Edma (1839–1921), plus a younger brother, Tiburce, born in 1848. Her mother, Marie-Joséphine-Cornélie Thomas, was the great-niece of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, one of the most prolific Rococo painters of the ancien régime. He also studied architecture at École des Beaux Arts. Her father, Edmé Tiburce Morisot, was the prefect (senior administrator) of the department of Cher. Morisot was born in Bourges, France, into an affluent bourgeois family. She was married to Eugène Manet, the brother of her friend and colleague Édouard Manet. It was held at the studio of the photographer Nadar.

Her work was selected for exhibition in six subsequent Salons until, in 1874, she joined the 'rejected' Impressionists in the first of their own exhibitions, which included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. Sponsored by the government, and judged by Academicians, the Salon was the official, annual exhibition of the Académie des beaux-arts in Paris. In 1864, she exhibited for the first time in the highly esteemed Salon de Paris. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of 'les trois grandes dames' of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.

Berthe Marie Pauline Morisot (French: January 14, 1841 – March 2, 1895) was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists.

Berthe Morisot by Malika Bauwens