Ultra Violet, born Isabelle Collin Dufresne, moved to New York in 1953, where she spent a decade surrounding herself with artists like John Graham, John Chamberlain, and Salvador Dali, with whom she began her painting career. Through Dali, she first met Warhol in 1963, and changed her name to Ultra Violet. She became one of Warhol's most visible and unforgettable Superstars.

As an actress, Ultra Violet has appeared in such films as John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy, Norman Mailer's Maid Stone, Milos Forman's Taking Off, and Warhol's I, a Man.

As a writer, her best-selling autobiography, Famous for Fifteen Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol, has been published in more than a dozen languages, and her play, You Are What You Eat, was performed in Czechoslovakia in 1992.

As a visual artist, her mixed-media works have been exhibited in over sixty venues worldwide.

Ultra Violet currently divides her time between her studio in Nice and her residence in Manhattan. In 1990, she published the manifesto of her new artistic movement "L'Ultratique", a letterist crusade that aligns art with spirituality, and focuses on the theme of apocalyptic angels.