Beardsley was born in Brighton, 1872. At the age of six, his family settled in London, attending Bristol Grammar School. He was exceptionally literate and something of a musical prodigy and by the age of 10, highly developed in the skill of drawing.

In his young life, he worked in an architect's office, and then the Guardian Life and Fire Insurance Company. In 1891, under the advice of Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, he took up art as a profession. In 1892 he attended the classes at the Westminster School of Art.

In 1893, a financier, attracted to Beardsley's work, was asked to publish a new magazine called "The Studio". He made a condition in his support of the publication that Aubrey Beardsley should be asked to contribute to it. Beardsley was admitted as a member of the New English Art Club and appointed theatrical cartoonist to "The Pall Mall Budget." It was his drawings for this magazine that most quickly and effectively spread his name across Europe.

Aubrey Beardsley was a public character, a private ecentric, and the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era. He was renowned for his dark erotic images, which were the main themes of his later work, and the flat, decorative idiom that became part of the European Art Nouveau. His most famous erotic illustrations were on themes of history and mythology, including his illustrations for Lysistrata and Salomé.

Beardsley's work reflected the decadence of his era and his influence was enormous and clearly visible in the work of the French Symbolists, the Poster art movement of the 1890s and the work of many later-period Art Nouveau artists.

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley died in France, March 1898, at the young age of 25.