Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge was born in 1963 in Verviers, Belgium. She trained as a historian at the University of Liège, graduating with a doctorate in philosophy and literature (1992) and agrégation de l'enseignement supérieur (2006). Her doctoral thesis focused on Greek worship of the goddess Aphrodite, while her habilitation examined the work of the scholarly traveller Pausanias to understand ancient Greek religion today. Her interest in the workings of polytheism, whether in terms of narrative traditions, representations or practices, also gave rise to the Collection of Greek Ritual Norms project.

She has spent her research career at the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique - FNRS (Belgium), while teaching lectures in the history of antiquity and the history of religions at the University of Liège. She co-founded the journal Kernos in 1987, and now directs this international publication devoted entirely to the study of ancient Greek religion. She was Director of Research at the FNRS when she was elected to the Chair in Religion, History and Society of the Ancient Greek World at the Collège de France in 2016.