Gabrielle Donnay was born in Landeshut, Germany (now Kamienna G\xf3ra, Poland) on 21 March 1920 and emigrated to the United States in 1937.[2] She received her B.A. from UCLA with highest honors in chemistry in 1941 and was awarded her Ph.D in 1949 from MIT. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University from 1949-1950. In 1949, she met and married Joseph (Jose) Donnay, a professor of crystallography and mineralogy at Johns Hopkins University.[3] In 1950, she joined the staff of the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, where she worked until 1969.[3] She had concurrent position at the U.S. Geological Survey from 1952-1955.[3] She was a professor in crystallography at McGill University in Montreal from 1970 to 1981.[4] She died on 4 April 1987 near Mont St-Hilaire, Quebec.[2]