Marlene Gottlieb completed her undergraduate degree in Spanish and Russian summa cum laude at Hunter College. From 1965-1971 she was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Columbia University, where she earned a Master of Arts and a Ph. D in Spanish. She has been a member of the faculty of the CUNY Doctoral Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures since 1977. She is also a professor of Spanish and the former Dean of Arts and Humanities at Lehman College.

Her area of specialization is contemporary Latin American poetry, with a subspecialty in Chilean poetry. She has published numerous books and articles in this field and is especially known for her work on the antipoetry of the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra: No se termina nunca de nacer: La poesía de Nicanor Parra (Madrid: Playor, 1977); Nicanor Parra: Antes y después de Jesucristo (Princeton: Linden Lane Press, 1993); Pablo Neruda and Nicanor Parra Face To Face (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997). She has also published extensively on the Spanish Modernist poet, Francisco Villaespesa: El Burlador de Sevilla of Francisco Villaespesa (Seville: Editoriales Andaluzas Unidas,1986); Las revistas modernistas de Francisco Villaespesa (Granada: Editorial Anel, 1995). Another of her research interests is the theme of Don Juan.

She serves on the editorial board of the electronic journal of literary criticism Ciberletras.