 Colleen Madamombe was born in 1964 in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe following independence in 1980) and received her secondary education at school in Kutama, between 1979 and 1984.She obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts at the BAT Workshop School of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe from 1985–1986.In 1986 she married the Zimbabwean sculptor Fabian Madamombe, with whom she later had seven children.