Diane Dufresne was born in a working class suburb of Montreal on September 30^th 1944. Her mother died when she was 12 years old and she left school to take care of her brother and sister. Early on she had developed a taste for dressing up and performing, and a few years later a job as a nurse allowed her to pay for singing lessons. Her first professional engagement in a bar in the Montreal suburbs, where she sang standards by French and Quebec artists such as Ferré, Brel and Vigneault.  

Her meeting with lyric writer Luc Plamondon in 1965 enabled her to work on more personal material. In 1966, still unknown in Quebec, she left for France.

In contrast to her repertoire in Canada, in France she sang songs by Quebec songwriters such as Jean-Pierre Ferland, Claude Léveillée and Félix Leclerc. She performed in the principal cabarets in vogue, including L’Ecluse and L’Echelle de Jacob. She took singing lessons at the Jean Lumière school, studied drama with actress Françoise Rosay, but she had little more success than in Quebec.  

A journalist who saw her perform in Paris wrote a glowing article about her, thanks to which, after returning to Quebec in 68, she released her first single, "Mon Cœur est fou". Canadians gave the disc a warm reception and Diane worked harder and developed her incredible talent as a live performer. In 1969, the Quebec public got their first taste of that characteristic Dufresne craziness in the revue, "Les Girls", in which she both acted and sang. 

The characteristic Dufresne style was all there: the intensity, the humour, the self-mockery, her provocative manner, her joyful rock ’n’ roll romanticism not without a certain violence, and above all her exceptionally versatile voice. The album’s success (60.000 copies sold) was due principally to a track which is now a Dufresne standard, "Aujourd’hui j’ai rencontré l’homme de ma vie".  

In December, for the record’s launch, Diane sang at the Le Patriot theatre, a Montreal venue, then toured throughout Quebec. No holes were barred to make each performance a unique celebration and fans adored her flamboyant stage act with its costumes, hairstyles, makeup, art direction.

In 1973, when Diane Dufresne did support act for Julien Clerc at L’Olympia in Paris, fans discovered the full live impact of a new name in Quebec music, as they had done a few years earlier with Robert Charlebois. She got a mixed reception, but in general Europeans were enthusiastic about her frenzied visual and musical imagination. 

From then on, hit followed hit and show followed show. In 74, she staged "A part de d’ça, j’me sens ben/Opéra-Cirque", a show based on the album of the same name released the previous year. She was also back in France with her "Quebec à Paris" tour. 

In 75 she released the album, "Sur la même longueur d’ondes", which included the hits, "Les hauts et les bas d’une hôtesse de l’air" and "Chanson pour Elvis", both written by Plamondon. Her show that year, "Mon premier show", again contained a series of vivid tableaux and illustrated the malicious pleasure she has always taken in stripping away the facade of theatrical pretence to show what goes on behind the scenes: at the end of the concert, the curtain and the decors were raised to reveal the stage and the wings completely bare.  

Following two new shows in 77, "Sans entracte" and "Spectacle au Café campus", she returned to L’Olympia in Paris , playing there from March 13th to 19th, this time top of the bill. 

Her long collaboration with François Cousineau came to an end during this time, but in 1978, her career made another leap forward with the musical comedy, "Starmania", written by Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon, in which she played a favourite character of hers, the star on the decline. Recorded in 78, the show was premiered the following year at the Palais des Sports in Paris. 

Also in 78, in her "Comme un film de Fellini" show at the Théâtre St-Denis in Montreal, Dufresne introduced a novel dimension by asking the audience to come to the show made up. The idea worked perfectly and became a fixture of her live performances in following years.  

In 79 she released the album, "Striptease", with its two superb numbers, "J’ai douze ans", about her mother who died when she was twelve, and "Le Parc Belmont", a disturbing song about madness. 

In the early eighties, the diva’s stage productions became even more audacious. On Quebec’s national day on June 24th 1980, she performed in Paris at the famous rock venue, Le Palace, with her breasts barely concealed by a veil. The following year, again on Saint Jean’s day, she appeared in front of an audience of 350.000 audience at the Vieux Port in Montreal dressed as Joan of Arc. The people of Quebec adored it. The constant evolution of her work and her live shows had made her a universally appreciated artist both in "la Belle Province" and in France.  

While continuing to work with Luc Plamondon, Diane Dufresne called on new songwriters Angelo Rinaldi, Christian Saint-Roch and Germain Gauthier who in 82 wrote the lyrics of one of the singer’s biggest hits, "Oxygène", on the "Turbulences" album. On the same record, she also did a cover version of Serge Gainsbourg’s "Suicide". 

In 84, Diane Dufresne staged one of her most famous shows, "Magic Rose", which – as the name suggests – features the colour pink. For the recording of the live album of the same name in the Olympic Stadium on August 16th 1984, audience and singer were dressed entirely in pink. In front of 46.000 people, Dufresne and guest artists Jacques Higelin and the American group, Manhattan Transfer, put on a show Quebec still remembers today.  

As if "Magic Rose" was not enough for one year, in November, she put on another show, "Dioxine de Carbone, written by Plamondon and Rinaldi, and directed by Hans-Peter Cloos, at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris.  

In 86, now living in Paris and Montreal, she put on "Top Secret", a highly theatrical show considered by some to be her most original. With "Symphonique n’roll", she opened up a whole new musical dimension for herself, perfectly in tune with her theatrical tastes. She was invited to do the show by the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, with whom she went on a world tour which included the Palais Garnier in Paris in 91, an exceptional venue for a non-classical piece. 

With the exception of the world tour, which took her to Japan, Diane Dufresne began to distance herself from her profession. In 1990, she performed for one night in the Paris suburbs with Quebec artists Claude Dubois and Michel Rivard and Frenchman Georges Moustaki.  

In 1993, Diane Dufresne tried her hand at song writing, choosing the themes which have continually obsessed her: money, the environment and unhappiness. "Détournement majeur", a rock dominated album, was written during a six-month stay in New York funded by a government grant. Audiences at the Forum in Montreal and then at L’Olympia in Paris from December 14th to 19th, applauded a performer, now almost fifty, who had become more tempered but had lost nothing of her offbeat imaginativeness.  

Fans had to wait until 1997 for the next Diane Dufresne album, "Comme un parfum de confession". With several tracks written and performed by classical pianist Alexis Weissenberg, it was both more intimate and more sober than her previous releases. The singer who had done everything, given everything on stage, premiered a new show in Paris in January 1998, in the stark but very beautiful Bouffes du Nord theatre. In contrast to her hits of yesteryear, her new material was like the show’s title, "Reservé" (Reserved). Backed by a string section and piano, the singer again played her favourite role, the jaded and blasé star, with several songs, including "J’vieillis", written by Michel Jonasz. 

On August 10th 1998 Diane Dufresne gave a memorable performance at the popular open-air festival in Ramatuelle (in the South of France).

Meanwhile, Diane continued to devote much of her time to her painting career and in the summer of '99 the singer had her work exhibited in the States, in a gallery in the New York region.

In July 2001 the singer performed next to Robert Charlebois and Claude Dubois at the 35th anniversary of the Quebec Summer Festival. The audience delighted in the inspiring trio. At the same time, the star prepared a great exhibition of her paintings in old Quebec. For the two following years she toured up and down the country.

In March 2003 she landed in Paris where she brought the house down on March 14th and 15th. The French were so excited to meet the Quebec singer again that tickets were sold out long before the show.

In March 2004, Diane Dufresne took to the stage again to present her new show "Diane Dufresne chante Kurt Weill" (Diane Dufresne sings chante Kurt Weill). After covering the songs of Juliette Gréco, Pauline Julien, Monique Leyrac and Marianne Faithfull, the Quebecois singer felt the time had come to pay tribute to Kurt Weill (the Jewish composer who wrote orchestrations for Bertolt Brecht’s lyrics before he was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1933). Dufresne’s new show included extracts from various Brecht operas including "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" and "The Threepenny Opera." On stage, in order to give some coherence to her retrospective of the Weill years, the singer invented a Mother Courage-style character who laughed, hoped and cried as she sang of a better world. Accompanied by the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal (conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin), Diane Dufresne performed a series of shows in Quebec.

March 2005 saw the release of the album "Diane Dufresne chante Kurt Weill - Symphonie no. 2" in Quebec. Diane made only a few stage appearances that year, guesting at an Alain Bashung concert at Le Métropolis, in Montreal, for instance. In July 2005, the singer performed her Kurt Weill show at the opening night of the Francofolies festival in Montreal.

In the spring of 2006, proving her creative spark was still very much fizzing, Diane Dufresne returned to the stage with a new show called "Plurielle", which she presented at the Monument-National in Montreal (on 16, 17 & 18 March with two extra dates added on 21 & 22 April). The show was divided into four distinct visual and musical 'tableaux.' The first section, "Romantisme et Nostalgie", featured the singer performing a number of her classic songs. Then a second shorter acoustic section was devoted to Kurt Weill songs (taken from "Diane Dufresne chante Kurt Weill"). The third section of the show was a feistier rock'n'roll affair where the singer addressed environmental issues. Then, before the final curtain call, the fourth part of the show, "Folie douce", featured covers of songs by Daniel Bélanger, Jacques Brel, Luc Plamondon and Michel Tremblay as well as a song written by Diane herself with music by Alain Sauvageau.

"Plurielle", which included four complete changes of stage costume as well as elaborate video images projected on the back of the stage and against the singer's skirt, was directed by Diane's husband, Richard Langevin. The show, which received rave reviews from the critics, wowed audiences across Quebec. In October 2006, Diane was awarded a prestigious 'Félix Hommage' award for the ensemble of her work, immortalised that year on the special boxed-set CD "Folie Douce." This three-album set featured a special radio series about the singer which had been broadcast on Radio Canada over several weeks in 2002. Featuring four hours of archive material and musical extracts, "Folie Douce" retraced the Quebecois diva's career (up to her "Liberté conditionnelle" show in 2002) and made reference to the Cousineau-Plamondon years and the colourful stage extravaganza "Magie rose" which she performed at the Olympic Stadium in 1984. "Folie Douce" also included mini-interviews with Juliette Gréco, Georges Moustaki and Charles Aznavour talking about Dufresne.

In August 2007, Diane Dufresne joined Juliette Gréco on stage at the Francofolies in Montreal for a moving rendition of "La Javanaise" (by Serge Gainsbourg). In September, Diane took her Kurt Weill show out on the road again with the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Fans had to wait until the autumn of 2007 before Diane Dufresne released a new studio album in Quebec, entitled "Effusion." Working with the pianist and arranger Alain Lefèvre, the singer produced a remarkably sober, pared-back work which revolved around songwriting themes close to her heart. The album featured contributions from old friends and collaborators such as Michel Rivard and Daniel Belanger and included an urgent environmental wake-up call in the form of "Terre planète bleue" (a song with lyrics penned by the Canadian astrophysicist Hubert Reeves).  

During the summer of 2008, Diane Dufresne was awarded one of France's most prestigious honours, the "Légion d'honneur." 

The singer continued to keep a relatively low profile, operating outside the traditional showbiz spotlight. But she did make a few concert appearances in 2008, performing at the Festival de Tadoussac, in Quebec, in June, for instance. In August, Diane Dufresne brought the Francofolies festival in Montreal to a rousing finale with her "Terre planète bleue" show. The show, staged with the help of Guy Caron, was a multi-arts extravaganza involving music, dance and circus acts.

The singer took to the stage of the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, in Paris, between 5 & 16 November 2008 for a series of simple piano-vocals recitals. Around the same time, her album "Effusion" was released in France.

December 2008