France Cordova was born August 5, 1947 in Paris. She grew up in California with 11 younger brothers and sisters. Though she majored in English while at Stanford, she worked on an anthropological project near Oaxaca, Mexico one summer. She used her experiences to write a short novel, The Women of Santo Domingo (1969). But that year while watching the moon landings on television France Cordova's earlier interested in astronomy and space science began to reassert itself. At the time she was a guest editor for Mademoiselle but eventually she returned to school to earn a Ph.D. in physics (1979) at CalTech. Her interest in writing persisted while in graduate school and for a time she was a staff writer for the L. A. Times.

After graduation Dr. Cordova began work as an astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, studying white dwarfs and pulsars. In 1988 she edited the book, Multiwavelength Astronomy, a collection of papers reviewing the entire field. From 1989 -1993 Dr. Cordova was a Professor, and Chair, of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University. She came Chief Scientist for NASA and served from 1993-1996.