Ludwig Bemelmans was born on April 27, 1898, in Meran, Austria-Hungary (now Italy). When Bemelmans was a young child, his father left the family for a mistress, so in 1904, his mother moved the family to Germany where Bemelmans was educated. He returned to Austria to serve as an apprentice to his uncle Hans Bemelmans, a hotel owner, before emigrating to the United States. Towards the end of World War I, Bemelmans joined the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of Second Lieutenant, though he was not shipped with American troops to Europe on account of his German heritage. He obtained U.S. citizenship in 1918.

Following the war, Bemelmans worked hotel jobs in New York to support himself while trying to transition into a career as an artist and cartoonist. He worked in pen and ink, watercolor, and gouache. In 1934, Bemelmans published his first children's book, Hansi, and in 1939, his big break came with the publication of the award-winning Madeline. The story of a red-headed French schoolgirl with iconic illustrations of the Parisian cityscape was turned into a successful series of books published from 1939-1999. Six of the stories were written and illustrated by Bemelmans, and a seventh story was published posthumously and illustrated by Bemelmans' grandson, John Bemelmans-Marciano.

Though Bemelmans was most well-known for the Madeline series, he also authored travel and humor books, adult novels, and movie scripts, including the script for Yolanda and the Thief (1945). In the 1940s, he was commissioned to paint murals on the walls of a new bar at The Carlyle hotel in Manhattan's Upper East Side, now known as Bemelmans Bar. In the 1950s, he began to transition into oil painting and purchased a bistro in Paris to cover with his murals, but the project flopped with resistance from the French bureaucracy. Bemelmans passed away in New York City on October 1, 1962, at the age of 64.