Brown was born in 1966, Washington, DC and currently live and works in New York City. She received her MFA from Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2002. Brown uses her large-scale acrylic paintings to wryly comment on the ductile and ever-changing essence of cultural identity, most often by creating visual mash-ups of two disparate but in fact subtly harmonious subcultures: the samurai and geishas depicted in traditional Japanese ukiyo-e printmaking and the contemporary world of hip-hop. Trained in the art of ukiyo-e herself, Brown pursues a transcultural aesthetic in both her imagery and her technique, mixing the racial, gender, and class issues in her subject matter with the deftness of a DJ.

The artist's paintings have been widely exhibited, and she has received numerous solo shows including A3, Black on Both Sides, Spellman College Museum of Fine Art (2004); All Falls Down, Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art (2010); and Introducing…The House of Brando, Salon 94 (2013). In 2011 she was commissioned to create a performance for the Performa biennial. Her work is held in many permanent collections including the Hirshhorn Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Art, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.