Carmen L. Browne was born in Calumet, Michigan on March 29, 1895 to John D. Browne and Anna Zimmerman Browne. Originally determined to become a surgeon, she fell in love with visual art in her later teen years and opted instead to study art. Her formal education began the Art Institute of Chicago, where she would later teach costume design and fashion illustration. She then moved to New York to study at the Art Students League under Hans Hoffman and Joseph Pennell, supporting herself as a department store window dresser and a wall paper designer, with several designs patented in 1920.

A 1927 New York Times review of a group show at the National Art Club described a Browne image of a girl pulling weeds as being "as true to nature as Millet tried to make his peasant girls," and a Browne nude as, "a fine abstraction" that "removes all superfluous details and gives a chance for beautiful rhythm of movement." She exhibited her work in the 9th International Print Makers Exhibition in Los Angeles in 1928, as well as in Paris and London - though she did not study in Europe. By 1930 she was living and working out of the American Women’s Association Club Hotel in Manhattan. 

During the Second World War, Browne lived in Stepney, CT, and contributed to the war effort as a volunteer Red Cross nurse at Hillside Home, helping recovering soldiers recently arrived from overseas. To help them pass the time, she typed and illustrated a small newspaper of local happenings, making copies of the original layouts by mimeographed them, and handed out the small publication titled <i>Our Town</i> to 200 bedridden soldiers. In 1945, she married Jesse Augustus Luckner, and together they opened The Pantry restaurant on Route 25.

Browne worked as a commercial artist creating illustrations for numerous children's books, receiving critical acclaim, and also designed wallpaper patterns for children. In addition to her commerical art career, she was a painter and poet, as well as a gardener. She eventually moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she lived until her death on April 11, 1992 at age 97. Her work was shown as recently as 2021, when a lithograph from her time at the Art Students League was exhibited in "Two Generations of Women Printmakers: Atelier 17 and the Art Students League", November 4 to December 5, 2021, at the Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, New York, NY.