Beth Henley was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play for her first full-length play, Crimes of the Heart, which was the co-winner in 1979 of the Great American Play Contest sponsored by the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Ms. Henley's screenplay for the film version of Crimes of the Heart won her an Academy Award Nomination. The film was directcd by Bruce Beresford and starred Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard. She wrote the screenplay for Miss Firecracker starring Holly Hunter, Mary Steenburgen and Tim Robbins, the screenplay for Nobody's Fool starring Rosanna Arquette and Eric Roberts, a teleplay for the PBS series, Trying Times, and co-wrote David Byrne's True Stories.

Beth Henley was born and raised in Mississippi, is a graduate from Southern Methodist University and lives in Los Angeles with her son Patrick.