Julie Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She lives and works in New York City. She studied at University Cheik Anta Diop, Dakar (1990–91), earning a BA from Kalamazoo College, Michigan (1992), and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (1997). She was a resident of the CORE Program, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1997-98) and the AIR Program at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2001).

In 2000 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Mehretu was the recipient of the 2001 Penny McCall Award. Her work has been included in Greater New York, P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York (2000), and she has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including one at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2000). More recently, her work has appeared in Free Style at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2001); The Americans at the Barbican Gallery in London (2001); White Cube gallery in London (2002), the Busan Biennale in Korea (2002); the 8th Baltic Triennial in Vilnius, Lithuania (2002); and Drawing Now: Eight Propositions (2002) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2001 she participated in the exhibition Painting at the Edge of the World at the Walker Art Center. Her works are held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.