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Edmonde Charles-Roux, née Marie-Charlotte Élisabeth Edmonde Charles-Roux, was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, an exclusive suburb of Paris, and grew up in Marseille and Rome. Her parents were François Charles-Roux, an historian and French ambassador to Prague and the Vatican, and his wife Sabine Gounelle. She was given the name Edmonde in homage to Edmond Rostand, a friend of her grandmother. At the outbreak of World War II, at age 20, she served as an ambulance driver and nurse in a unit of the Foreign Legion and was wounded. Then she joined the French Resistance as a nurse in a clandestine clinic. In August 1944, as the Allies invaded southern France and fought up to the Rhine, she was summoned back to the army by General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny and served on his staff. She was then attached to the French 5th Armored Division as a nurse and social worker, and was wounded again in Austria.
She was decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d'honneur in 1945 and made an honorary corporal by the Foreign Legion. After the war,
she earned her baccalauréat and began her journalism career at the newly-created magazine Elle. In 1948, she went to work for French Vogue, becoming editor-in-chief in 1954. She left Vogue in May 1966, and three months later, published the novel Oublier Palerme (Forget Palermo), which won the Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious literary award in France. It was later adapted into a film with the same name. Also in 1966, she met Gaston Defferre, the mayor of Marseille, later Minister of the Interior, and married him in 1973. She wrote three more novels and biographies of Coco Chanel and Isabelle Eberhardt. She also wrote the libretti for several ballets by Roland Petit, including Le Guépard and Nana.
A member of the Académie Goncourt from 1983, she served as its president in 2002-2014.