The daughter of a metallurgist, Annie French was born in Glasgow and studied at the Glasgow School of Art under Fra Newbery and the Belgian Symbolist, Jean Delville (1896-1902). Influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, Aubrey Beardsley and Jessie M. King, she developed a style combining vivid colours, curvilinearity of form and almost confetti-like textures. While still a student, she contributed an illustration to The Book of the Jubilee of the University of Glasgow (1901), and later illustrated one book, a selection of Heinrich Heine's poems in 1908. However, her watercolours (often on vellum) and drawings are mainly in the form of illustrations, and she designed a number of postcards and greetings cards. In 1906, she began to share a studio with Bessie Innes Young and Jane Younger and, three years later, became Tutor in Ceramic Decoration at Glasgow School of Art as successor to Jessie M. King. But following her marriage to the artist George Woolliscroft Rhead (1854-1920), she settled in London, and became a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy, until the mid nineteen-twenties. She died in Jersey.