Nicole Claveloux was born on June 23, 1940, in Saint-Étienne, France, where she spent her childhood. Her father died at the front a few days before her birth. She grew up with her mother, a teacher at the city's Beaux-Arts school, who fed her on picture books. Shy, wild, and solitary, Nicole grew up surrounded by the richly illustrated books of Père Castor, the comics of L'Espiègle Lili, and the illustrations of Gustave Doré.

In 1958, she enrolled at the Beaux-Arts school in Saint-Étienne, where her great aptitude for drawing manifested itself. In 1966, she moved to Paris, where she began publishing in the bimonthly magazine "Planete", dedicated to fantastic realism, as well as in "Marie-Claire" and "Marie-France." In 1967, she was noticed by François Ruy-Vidal, a key figure in French illustrated publishing at the time. A former teacher, he had recently partnered with American publisher Harlin Quist to launch the wild publishing project Les livres de Harlin Quist. This meeting marked the beginning of Nicole Claveloux's extraordinary journey in children's publishing and a fervent collaboration: La Forêt des lilas by Comtesse de Ségur (Harlin Quist, 1970), Alala, les télémorphoses by Guy Monréal (Harlin Quist, 1970; in Italian I televiaggi di Alina, Emme Edizioni, 1970), and Les Aventures d’Alice aux pays des merveilles by Lewis Caroll (Grasset, 1974).

During the same years, she was part of a group of authors collaborating with the Franco-Italian publishing house Dalla parte delle bambine, founded by Adela Turin with the aim of overturning stereotypes of girls' representation in children's books. For Dalla parte delle bambine, she illustrated Andersen's The Little Mermaid and Thumbelina, with feminist reinterpretations of the endings, as well as George Sand's Brise et Rose.

Her first foray into comics came in 1973, in the children's and young adult magazine "Okapi," which had been launched two years earlier. For them, she revived the character of Grabote (the protagonist of two comics for Harlin Quist), an "atypical" child heroine, irreverent and hilarious, who would roam the pages of the magazine until 1981. At the same time, Claveloux drew comics for adults, with masterpieces such as La Main verte and Morte saison (in collaboration with Edith Zha, who also wrote the scripts), published in installments in "Métal Hurlant" between 1976 and 1978.

Her feminist activism would be put to good use in the adventure of "Ah! Nana," the first feminist comics magazine created by Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Janic Guillerez (Les Humanoïdes Associés), published from 1976 to 1978, for which she created covers and stories such as Une gamine toujours dans la lune, La Conasse et le prince charmant, and Bavardages souterrains.

In the 1980s, she began to distance himself from the world of comics and return to children's books. Among her vast output, her long-standing collaboration with Christian Bruel for the publishing house Le Sourire qui mord deserves special mention, resulting in small-scale masterpieces such as Crapougnerie, Pour de rire, and Des hauts et de bas.

He also devoted herself to erotic art, continuing to nurture the fantastical vein that distinguishes her work with Morceaux choisis de la Belle et la bête (Être, 2003), Confessions d’un monte en l’air (Folies d’encre, 2008), and Contes de la fève et du gland (Folies d’encre, 2010).

In 2020, after a fifty-year career and 140 books, he received the Fauve d'Honneur from the Angoulême Festival, the most prestigious European comics award for her entire body of work. She returned to comics in 2024 with Ce soir c'est cauchemar, published by Cornélius (which is currently recovering her entire comics work).

Eris will publish La mano verde e altri racconti, for the first time in Italy, in autumn 2025.