After finishing high school at Camp Hill High, Brisbane, Van Moolenbroek held various jobs, including working in kindergartens and completing a Kindercraft course. She carried her people skills on to working as a trainee welfare worker with the Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agency where she produced a domestic violence kit. She has also worked as a casual academic at the Faculty of Education at Queensland University of Technology. In the frontmatter of
Collected Works of Lesley van Moolenbroek (1984) she is quoted as saying that her two favourite poets are
Kath Walker and
Judith Wright (qq.v), and she hopes that one day she will be able to express her work "as clearly, wisely and beautifully as they do".
