Brenda Hurley was born in Dublin, Ireland. She studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music Dublin,Trinity College Dublin , Die Stattliche Hochschule fur Musik Freiburg, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and the National Opera Studio in London.

During her early years as opera repetiteur she worked at Scottish Opera and Teatro Massimo di Palermo. In 1989 she began a long  association with Glyndebourne Festival and Touring Opera, receiving the Janni Strasser repetiteur award in 1995. She was also on the staff of Opera North for some time. She has guested at ENO, the Paris Opera (Bastille) , Opera Zuid (Maastricht) and the Ruhr Triennale.

Since 1995 Brenda has been on the full-time staff of the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam, where she lives. Since 2003 she has worked annually at the Salzburg Festival and was Studienleiterin for Simon Rattle at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 2004.

Since 2007 Brenda has worked at the Metropolitan Opera.

Brenda is  very involved in working with young singers and coaches regularly for training programmes at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Jette Parker Programme), The National Opera Studio in London,  the Young Artists Training Programme in Tokyo , Cardiff International Academy of Voice  (CIAV) , the International Opera Center in Amsterdam (IOCN ) and Opera Theatre Company Dublin , where she was instrumental in forming the Young Associate Artists Programme in 2004,  of which she is Vocal Consultant.

In the summer of 2008 she was the principal coach on the the newly-formed Young Singers Project in the Salzburg Festival (YSP).