She was born in Tunis in 1953. Her father was Tunisian and her mother French. She grew up learning both Arabic and French. Later, having moved to Paris with her family at the age of sixteen, she read English at university. Of these three languages, French is her chosen tongue for poetry. Her first collection of poems appeared in 1980, followed by thirteen more along with two volumes of reinvented Tunisian folktales. She also translates the Filipino writer Francisco Sionil José from English into French.