Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli was born to Italian parents, who emigrated to South Australia (SA) from Southern Italy in the late 1950s. She attended Hectorville and Newton Primary Schools and Mary McKillop College, Kensington. She gained a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Diploma of Education and a Master of Arts degree in women's studies on the negotiation of ethnicity, sexuality and gender (1991) from the University of Adelaide. She enrolled for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney.

From 1982 she worked for the Catholic Education Office in SA, both as a secondary school teacher teaching English and History, and as Gender and Equity Officer, writing, consulting and implementing the Gender and Equity Policy for SA Catholic schools. She lectured in Women's Studies at the University of Adelaide 1991-93 and the University of South Australia 1992-93 and has taught at Macquarie University (1995, 1997) and the University of Technology, Sydney (1996). In 1997-98 she was employed as a Research Officer by the National Centre in HIV Social Research at Macquarie University, in a Commonwealth government project which resulted in the publication of the reports Cultural Diversity and Men who Have Sex with Men (1998) and Too Busy Studying and No Time for Sex? Homosexually Active Male International Students and Sexual Health (1999).

She has raised questions and debated the issues of ethnicity and gender. Her activism, writing and research on issues of sexual diversity are largely attributable, she says, to her recognition of the emotional, social and other upheavals faced by her friend Jon when he found that he was HIV positive (see her book Someone You Know). She has undertaken volunteer work for the AIDS Council of South Australia. She has been a member of the Australian Society of Authors and read in 1989 at the Women in Italian Culture Conference, La Trobe University, Melbourne, and in 1990 at the Uranian Society (Gay and Lesbian Group), Adelaide.

In 1998 Dr Pallotta-Chiarolli was appointed a Lecturer in Social Diversity in Health and Education in the School of Health Sciences, Deakin University. By 2004 she had been appointed a Senior Lecturer in that Faculty. She has been involved in other research projects and consultancies with a specific focus on ethnicities, gender and sexualities in relation to sexual and emotional health, and schooling. She has described her work as "constantly juggling and balancing the roles of academic, activist and writer, pushing and blurring the boundaries of each". As well as the work listed here she has written Tapestry: Italian Lives Over Five Generations (1999) and edited Girls' Talk: Young Women Speak Their Hearts and Minds (1998). In 2005 her work, Being Normal is the Only Way to Be : adolescent perspectives on gender and school was published.