Louise Murphy was born in 1943 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Her ethnicity is Scottish, Irish, and German. Murphy's hobbies include playing the flute, classical music, and the opera. She began writing at the age of five, driven by the joy of creating something tangible that wouldn't disappear like her thoughts.

Murphy is an avid reader and encourages her students to read as much as possible. She attended the University of Kentucky and initially taught English to middle-school students in Newark, Delaware. In 1968, she relocated to California, where she raised her two children and earned a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Murphy also taught at San Francisco State University for five years and later taught novel writing at Acalanes Adult Education in Lafayette, California.

She is the recipient of a Writer’s Digest award for formal poetry and won the Shaunt Basmajian Chapbook Award in 2003 for her chapbook, Pilgrimage. Her writing and poetry have appeared in numerous journals.