Barbara Romanowicz studied mathematics at theÉcole Normale Supérieure before specializing first in astronomy, and finally defending a doctoral thesis in geophysics at the Université Paris-VII in 1979. A researcher at the CNRS in the 1980s, she led the development of GEOSCOPE, a global network of broadband seismic stations, which remains France's contribution to the international database used for imaging the Earth's interior. Appointed Professor and Director of the Seismology Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley in 1991, she spent 20 years developing a real-time seismic monitoring network for Northern California.

She has held the Physics of the Earth's Interior chair at the Collège de France since 2011, and leads an international research team between the IPG in Paris and UC Berkeley, where she has been Professor Emeritus since 2016.

Alongside her research into seismic imaging of the Earth's interior, she is interested in the internal dynamics of planets, the processes behind earthquakes, and the origin of the " terrestrial hum ", a long-period seismic noise generated in the oceans.