Born in Berkeley, and raised in the suburb of Walnut Creek, California, Mimi Plumb received her Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in 1986, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from SFAI in 1976. She has taught photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, and for 28 years at San Jose State University.

Over the years, Mimi has explored a wide range of subjects, from her suburban roots to the United Farmworkers as they organized for union elections in the fields, to a recurring theme of photographing women and girls. Dark days, photographs from the mid-1980s, pictures an American dystopia. Mimi has also spent many years passionately riding and photographing horses.

Mimi has received grants and fellowships from the California Humanities Grant (2015), California Arts Council (1989-90), the James D. Phelan Art Award in Photography (1985-86), the Marin Arts Council (1999-2000), and was a finalist for the Eureka Fellowship in 2007. In 2011, she received an Alameda County Purchase Award. Her photographs are in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.

Recent shows include a solo presentation of her photographs from the 1970s-80s at RayKo Photo Center, San Francisco, May/June 2016, and inclusion of her portraits, The Girls, in an exhibition at the Battery, San Francisco, October 2015/January 2016. Lectures from 2015 and 2016 include Photo Alliance, May 2015, the Battery, March 2015, and UC Davis, May 2016. Recently published, April 2016, in the New York Times Lens Blog, Labor and Love from California's Farmlands, depicting the organizing efforts of California farmworkers in 1975.