Mary Moore was born in Birmingham, Alabama (1950) and grew up there, on Enon Ridge, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement of the nineteen-sixties. Participating in an educational transfer programme in the late sixties, she left Birmingham to finish high school in Port Washington, New York. After graduation she went on to Pratt Institute to study Fashion Design, but, interrupted her studies the following year to explore Europe, "with a friend and a back-pack", for an undetermined length of time. Years later, having settled into life in the Netherlands, Moore completed the Painting and Drawing curriculum at the Academy of Fine Arts and Applied Sciences in Rotterdam (renamed the Willem de Kooning Academie in 1998).

In her photographic works, Moore often juxtaposes rediscovered family and archival images to her own photographs, a combination she describes as "effective in moving the viewer into the realm of timelessness", and enjoys using classic photographic and printing techniques. Whether painting, drawing, or using a camera, Moore strives to create a sense of intimacy, reflect collective memory and experience, and to be an impetus for historical awareness. Some of the recurring themes in her work are: Ruins, Loss, Gardens, Memory, Growth and Renewal; all great metaphors for the experience of life.