Simone Lazaroo emigrated to Perth with her family at age two. In 1983 she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the then Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University). For several years she taught Art and English at various schools, and from 1988-1990 wrote resource materials for the Western Australian Ministry for Education. She turned to full-time writing when awarded a Creative Development Grant by the Western Australian Department for the Arts in 1990.
In 1993, her manuscript The World Waiting to be Made won the TAG Hungerford Award for unpublished fiction and was highly commended in the Australian/Vogel Literary Award. The novel was subsequently published in 1994. While The World Waiting to be Made was inspired by Lazaroo's own experiences she has used fiction to give it a life of its own. The theme of this first book is of an outsider fighting to find a place where she can belong, with the narrator trying to change her appearance to conform to what she perceives as Australian. In trying to reclaim herself, the narrator travels back to her father's family in Singapore and Malacca, where it seems she is also only partly accepted.
In 2004, Lazaroo submitted The True Body (a novel) and 'Recovering the Remains', (an essay) to the Faculty of Community Services, Education and Social Science, Edith Cowan University, Perth for her Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.).