Coral Fourie (neé Knobel) was born in Mahikeng in 1937. She spent a large part of her formative years in the Kalahari and Botswana where she befriended en built steady friendships with the Bakwena tribe of Botswana, Bakgalagadi, G/hana, G/wii and K/hua San peoples. Some of the major influences during this time were meeting South African writers, such as P.J. Schoeman and W.A.de Klerk, who were friends of the family as well as her father’s cousin, Hein Knobel, who was a keen photographer and anatomy student.

The impressions which impacted most on her psyche, however, were doing traditional wall paintings with mud and cow dung with her playmates’ mothers and watching Bushmen doing etchings on ostrich eggshells. Atier school she attended the Pretoria Teachers’ Training College where Walter Batiss was one of her tutors. Bill Ainslie from the Johannesburg Art Foundation followed in this role in the later years while she was an art teacher.

She has participated in 32 exhibitions, mostly solo shows, throughout her adult life, completed numerous commissions, has been included in numerous collections and has written three books, with one translated into German and another one published in four languages simultaneously; Afrikaans, German and English, French. She has lived with her husband, Jan, and four children in Lichtenburg, Pietersburg, Thabazimbi, Tsolo in the Transkei, Lebowa, Hartswater (teaching in Taung) and back to Lichtenburg. She presently resides in Parys in the Free State.