Barbara Quandt was born in 1947 in Berlin. From 1970 to 1976 she studied at the University of the Fine Arts in West Berlin under Hans Kuhn and K. H. Hödicke. From 1978 to 1979 a DAAD Scholarship took her to the St Martins School of Art in London, and a PS1 Scholarship to New York in 1982. In 2003 she began to teach at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Arts in Halle (Saale). Since 2008 Quandt has lived and worked in Lehnitz (Brandenburg) and Berlin.