Renata Bernal was born in Munich, Germany in 1937. She came to the United States at the age of 13. After attending Cooper Union in New York City she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and a Masters in Art Education from Brown University.

Bernal had a great interest in the graphic arts while at SFAI, and she studied with Nathan Oliveira between 1956 and 1959. She worked with ink drawing, woodcuts and oil painting throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Bernal began working in an acrylic airbrush technique on canvas in the late 1960s. It allowed her to create the same feeling as working with oil. This became the primary medium throughout the subsequent decades for her larger abstractions. She continued to work with other mediums like pastel and charcoal, and later, ink drawings.

Bernal's work has been exhibited in New York City, San Francisco, Providence, Rhode Island, and many cities in upstate New York. Her work can be viewed in permanent collections at the Binghamton University Foundation and the Security Mutual Life building in Binghamton, New York.

Renata Bernal is currently retired in Binghamton, New York.