Boitran Huynh-Beattie obtained a Graduate Diploma from Monash University in 1996 and a PhD in art history from Sydney University in 2005. In 2009 she curated the Nam Bang! exhibition held at Casula Powerhouse Museum, an event which examined the consequences of the Vietnam War and brought together works by artists from Australia, Vietnam, the United States and France.
Beginning in 2009, Huynh-Beattie contributed to AustLit as a researcher and indexer, documenting literary production by Vietnamese-Australian writers. Her work has resulted in over 300 Vietnamese-Australian writers and organisations being added to the database, with more than 2,000 Vietnamese-language works.
In 2011, Huynh-Beattie was awarded an AsiaLink residency in Vietnam to conduct research on Modernist Saigonese art and its connections to contemporary Vietnamese-Australian art and culture. She was also invited by the Singapore Art Museum to nominate artists for its Signature Art Prize. Huynh-Beattie was in Singapore in January 2012 when she passed away suddenly.