Lien Botha Botha was born in Gauteng in 1961, studied languages at Pretoria University and worked as a Press Photographer for BEELD before moving to Cape Town in 1984. In 1988 she obtained a BAFA degree from the University of Cape Town. Since that time she has participated in more than 80 South African group shows and 26 international group exhibitions and has held eight solo exhibitions. She has curated 5 exhibitions including Photo Works by Women in 1994, Bloedlyn for the Klein Karoo Arts Festival and Invincibles for the Pretoria Art Museum (both in 1999). During the same year she served on the curatorial committee of the first Cape Town Month of Photography.

Over the past 17 years she has produced consistent bodies of lens-based work including:
Africana Collectanea / 1994, Krotoa's Room / 1995, Boxing Days / 1997, Postscript / 1998, Ten trees growing nowhere / 1999, Ten degrees of separation / 2000, Book of gloves / 2001, Radio Maria / 2002, Brother's Keeper, Safari / 2004, Amendment / 2006.

Botha's work is represented in major collections throughout South Africa: SANG, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Durban Art Gallery, Pretoria Art Museum, University of Stellenbosch, Standard Bank Corporate, SASOL, Telkom, MuseumAfrica and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Museum as well as in private collections locally and abroad.

Articles and reviews on her work appeared in a wide range of publications and electronic media such as Mail & Guardian, Sunday Tribune, Cape Times, die Burger, Financial Mail, de Arte, Vuka, ArtThrob, Grey Areas, Contempo, Creative Camera (UK), Black&White Magazine (US) and Images (France).

Botha runs a professional photographic practice and has been invited as part- time lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art UCT, Stellenbosch University, the Ruth Prowse School of Art as well as Studio Art Centres International - Florence, Italy and the San Francisco Art Institute.In 2002 her work appeared in the fifth edition of the TAXI series on contemporary South African Artists.

She was the invited artist for the 10th anniversary of the KKNK in Oudtshoorn in 2004 where her solo exhibition Groot Inkleurboek: Safari was launched.

In 2005 she collaborated with the French Theatre group Compagnie des Limbes on a piece called Cutting Water, based on The Waves by Virginia Woolf. In the same year she attended a residency at Nouaison in Pujols and had exhibitions at L'Ete Photographique de Lectoure and Mc2a, Bordeaux France.
Her work was included in the Bamako Biennale: Another World, Mali, 2005.

February 2006 she attended the Ampersand Fellowship in New York and in October of the same year her latest solo show called Amendment opened to critical acclaim at the Photographer's Gallery in Cape Town.

Safari was included in Reality Check - an exhibition of Contemporary South African Photography which toured Germany through 2007.

Amendment was selected for Towards a balanced earth, at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in June 2008.
In November 2008 her mid-career retrospective called Anthology, opened at the Oliewenhuis Museum in Bloemfontein and proceeded to the Thompson gallery in Johannesburg through March 2009.

Her work was included in the group show Construct: Beyond the Documentary Photograph which toured selected South African venues (such as the Durban Art gallery, National Arts Festival/Grahamstown and Goethe Institute/ Johannesburg), through 2009.

White stick for the Arctic was exhibited at Reflets d'Afrique: Panafrican Festival, MOMA, Algiers, July-September 2009.
Parrot Jungle, her ninth solo show, opened at the Photographers gallery, Cape Town in October 2009.