Shirley Ann Manson was born in Edinburgh on 26 August 1966, the daughter of Muriel Flora (née MacKay) and John Mitchell Manson. Her father, a descendant from the fishing community of Northmavine, was a university lecturer, while her mother was a big band singer who had been adopted by a Lothian-based family at an early age and took on the family name MacDonald. Manson was named after an aunt, who was herself named after Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley. She has two sisters: Lindy-Jayne, who is two years older than her, and Sarah, who is two years younger than her. They were brought up in the Comely Bank and Stockbridge areas of Edinburgh. She attended Broughton High School and her childhood education was informed by the Church of Scotland (her father was her Sunday School teacher) until age 12.

Manson’s first public performance was in 1970, at age four, with her older sister in an amateur show held at the local Church Hill Theatre. Enrolled at Flora Stevenson Primary School, she received instruction in recorder, clarinet, and fiddle, and learned ballet and piano from extramural classes at age seven. Manson was a member of Girlguiding UK throughout this period of her youth as a Brownie and a Girl Guide. She attended the City of Edinburgh Music School, the music department of Broughton High School. While at Broughton, she became an active member of its drama group, performing in amateur dramatic and musical performances such as The American Dream and The Wizard of Oz, while also singing with the Waverley Singers, a local girl choir. A 1981 Edinburgh Festival Fringe production of Maurice the Minotaur, in which Manson played a prophet, was awarded a Fringe First award by The Scotsman newspaper.

Manson’s first musical experiences came from briefly singing with local Edinburgh acts The Wild Indians and performed backing vocals with Autumn 1984. While she was acting in her group, Manson was approached by Goodbye Mr Mackenzie’s lead Martin Metcalfe to join his band. Manson embarked on a relationship with Metcalfe initially, but remained involved after splitting from him and became a prominent member of the group, performing keyboards, backing vocals and becoming involved in the band’s business side. Manson’s first release with the Mackenzies was a YTS release of “Death of a Salesman” in 1984. The group signed a major-label record deal with Capitol Records in 1987, and they released their first album Good Deeds and Dirty Rags, and their only UK top 40 entry “The Rattler”. In 1990, the group’s contract was transferred to Parlophone, another EMI label, but after two singles failed to chart Parlophone declined to release the group’s second album Hammer and Tongs.

Recording under the name Angelfish, and using some of the newly written material and a previously released Mackenzie b-side, Manson and the group recorded the tracks that would make up the Angelfish album in Connecticut with Talking Heads’ Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. A lead in track “Suffocate Me” was sent to college radio where it was well received. Angelfish and second single “Heartbreak To Hate” followed in 1994. Angelfish toured Belgium, Canada, France, and the U.S. The band co-supported Live on a tour of North America, along with Vic Chestnutt. The music video for “Suffocate Me” was aired on MTV’s 120 Minutes. Producer and musician Steve Marker caught the broadcast and thought Manson would be a great singer for his band, Garbage, which also featured producers Duke Erikson and Butch Vig.

Vig invited Manson to Smart Studios to sing on a couple of tracks. After an unsuccessful audition, she returned to Angelfish. Manson admitted she felt intimidated showcasing herself to Vig, who produced bands she admired such as Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and The Smashing Pumpkins, and Vig added that the audition’s disorganized nature along with the Americans not understanding Manson’s Scottish accent caused communication problems. At the end of the Live tour, Angelfish imploded and Manson returned to Smart for a second try. She began to work on the then-skeletal origins of some songs and the band invited her to become a full-time member and finish the album; she co-wrote and co-produced the entire album with the rest of the band. In August 1994, Radioactive gave their permission for Manson to work with Garbage. The band’s debut album Garbage was released in August 1995, and went on to sell over 4 million copies, buoyed by a run of high charting singles including “Only Happy When It Rains” and “Stupid Girl.” Manson quickly became the public face of the band over the course of a tour that took the band through to the end of 1996. Echo & the Bunnymen had asked Manson to sing on their 1997 comeback album.

Reviewing a live Garbage performance, Jon Pareles of The New York Times commented, “Temptress, lover, sufferer, scrapper – those have been Ms. Manson’s personae since Garbage started in 1995. In other eras she might have been a pop torch singer, a soul belter or a new-wave frontwoman: a Shirley Bassey, a Dusty Springfield, or a Chrissie Hynde. There’s a little of each of them in her voice” also stating “In the course of each song she let her voice rise in anger, contempt or passion”. Green Left Weekly, in a review of Garbage, remarked that Manson “vocalist and guitarist, has a powerful voice, which soars and dips like a bird. It can plead or demand. It can sound dreamy or psychotic.” Reviewing a 2012 live Garbage performance, Catherine Gee of The Daily Telegraph noted that Manson “remains a striking performer whose distinctive contralto snarl can still raise the hairs on the back of your neck.” In a review of Garbage, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described Manson’s voice as “thin and airy”, whilst Mike Diver of the BBC stated Manson owned “a snarl in her voice but [was] equally capable of a purr to melt away any resistance.” also adding “even at her most vulnerable, Manson maintains her controlling condition”.

The first time Manson contributed her vocals to a project separately from any of her bands was in 1998, when she performed vocals for the chorus of a Garbage-produced remix of Fun Lovin’ Criminals 1999 single “Korean Bodega”. Due to litigation problems surrounding Manson’s contractual obligation to Radioactive Records, further collaborations with both Fun Lovin’ Criminals and Moby were unable to proceed.

In 2001, Manson became an ambassador for the M•A•C AIDS Fund, fronting their fourth two-year charity lipstick marketing campaign alongside Elton John and Mary J. Blige, beginning with the launch of the VIVAMAC IV lipstick in March 2002, in which all proceeds of the sale of the lipstick goes to help fund AIDS charities and initiatives. While touring, Manson visited several AIDS charities in Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Toronto, New York, San Francisco and Madison to make several donations totalling over $300,000 on behalf of the M•A•C AIDS Fund.

In 2002, electronic group West London Deep sampled Manson’s vocal from “You Look So Fine” in their white label track “You’re Taking Me Over”. Manson refused clearance for the sample and the track was scrapped. By that point the track, and remixes by Inner City, Problem Kids and Desyn Masiello and Leon Roberts had already been circulated. The song was reworked and re-released the following year as “Gonna Make You My Lover”, without Manson’s vocal.

In 2003, the M•A•C AIDS Fund linked with the Elton John AIDS Foundation to produce the White Bedroom campaign, where both Elton John and Manson recorded PSAs promoting condom use and stating facts on AIDS. By 2007, the combined six VIVAMAC campaigns had raised over $100 million U.S. dollars, and as a former ambassador Manson accepted a cheque for £51,000 on behalf of HIV charity Waverley Care from the M•A•C AIDS Fund on 10 April 2008 at Harvey Nichols Edinburgh store. Manson had become a patron of Waverley Care in October 2002 and previously hosted a fund raiser auction to raise funds for the charity in January 2004 which raised £45,000. A Fender guitar owned by Manson raised £1,050, while other items auctioned included contributions sourced by Manson herself, from Elton John and Kylie Minogue.

Manson teamed up with Marilyn Manson and Tim Sköld in 2004 to record a cover version of the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” but both felt the track inappropriate for either acts upcoming albums, and remains unreleased. Later that year, Manson and Brody Dalle contributed backing vocals to a Queens of the Stone Age track. In 2006, Manson planned to record a John Lennon cover version for the Amnesty International Instant Karma charity compilation with bassist Eric Avery, however a scheduling misunderstanding left them short of time and unable to record the song. Manson and Avery eventually co-wrote and recorded “Maybe”, a ballad duet for Avery’s album Help Wanted.

Manson’s lyrics became more overtly political for Garbage’s fourth record, 2005’s Bleed Like Me, which after the surprise success of lead-in single “Why Do You Love Me”, posted some of the band’s highest chart positions upon release. Garbage began an extended hiatus in October 2005. During this period, in 2007, Garbage reformed to perform a short set at a benefit show to raise cash to pay for Wally Ingram’s medical treatment, shared song ideas via the internet, recorded new material, and filmed a music video to promote the band’s Absolute Garbage greatest hits compilation. Garbage returned to the studio in 2010 to write and record material for a fifth album, entitled Not Your Kind of People and subsequently released in May 2012, thus ending the band’s seven-year hiatus from recording.

Manson confirmed in March 2006 that she had begun work on a solo album, working with musician Paul Buchanan, producer Greg Kurstin, and film composer David Arnold, stating that she had “no timetable” for completing the project. In 2007, Manson collaborated with Rivers Cuomo of Weezer. Manson presented some of her work to Geffen Records in 2008, who found it “too noir”, prompting Manson and Geffen to terminate her contract by mutual agreement. Manson later elaborated, “[Geffen] wanted me to have international radio hits and ‘be the Annie Lennox of my generation’. I kid you not; I am quoting directly.” “I made a quiet, very dark, non-radio-friendly record,” she recalled. “I’m not interested in writing nursery rhymes for the masses.”

Manson was cast in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in May 2008, after being asked to appear by series creator Josh Friedman and enduring a multiple audition process, beating out other actresses including Julie Ann Emery. She debuted in the season two premiere episode “Samson and Delilah” as Catherine Weaver, CEO of a technology company, ZeiraCorp. At the conclusion of the episode, Weaver is revealed to be a liquid-metal T-1001 Terminator. Manson also performed and co-arranged a rock and blues version of the gospel song “Samson and Delilah” for the episode’s score. Manson cites actress Glenn Close and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as her acting influences for the ambiguous character. Manson also played the human Weaver in archive footage viewed by the T-1001 in the episode “The Tower Is Tall, But the Fall Is Short”.

In 2008, Manson became involved with The Pablove Foundation, a charity founded by Dangerbird Records head Jeff Castelaz, whose son Pablo succumbed to cancer the following year. Castelaz, whose family Manson had befriended in the 90s, had asked Manson to sing “Life on Mars?” at their sons’ memorial. Funds raised for The Pablove Foundation fund pediatric cancer research and educational and quality of life programming for families dealing with childhood cancer. Manson reformed Garbage to contribute an exclusive track, “Witness to Your Love”, to a charity album for the Foundation; signed off a Pablove poster for auction on eBay; Manson also hosted a fundraiser headlined by the Silversun Pickups, and performed acoustically on-stage at a second fundraiser with Butch Vig and Tom Gabel (for a rendition of “Witness…”) and with Greg Kurstin (for a cover of Pablo’s favourite song, David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?”).

Manson was married to Scottish artist Eddie Farrell from 1996 to 2003. In 2008, Manson became engaged to record producer and Garbage sound engineer Billy Bush. They were married at a Los Angeles courthouse in May 2010. They continue to reside in Los Angeles, while Manson maintains a second home in the Edinburgh suburb of Joppa.

Manson continued to write material while without a record deal and had been in talks with David Byrne and Ray Davies about a potential collaboration. In 2009, Manson posted three demos on her Facebook profile, written by her and Kurstin, titled “In the Snow”, “Pretty Horses” and “Lighten Up”. “Pretty Horses” was later featured in the pilot episode of the show Conviction. 14 additional songs co-written with Kurstin and registered on copyright and performance rights societies included Don’t Want To Pretend, Don’t Want Anyone Hurt, Gone Upside, Hot Shit, Kid Ourselves, Little Dough, Pure Genius, Sweet Old World, Spooky, So Shines A Good Deed, The Desert, No Regrets, Stop, To Be King.

In 2009, Manson announced she was stepping away from music, saying she got sick of the music industry’s new practices and had found more excitement in acting. Manson said she thought about abandoning the music business in 2008, when her mother developed dementia, and later died, saying that “I didn’t want to make music, didn’t feel creative. I could barely function.” Later that year she reconsidered her words and went back into performing after being asked by friends to sing David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?” at their son’s memorial. According to Manson, “we were all in so much pain, but it meant so much to them that I could sing that song and so much to me that I was able to do something. It made me realise how much music sustains people. I don’t know why I’d turned my back on it.”

In 2009, Manson made her first venture into the video game industry by becoming digitally mapped to create an avatar of herself for the Guitar Hero franchise. In the fifth game in the series, Manson is an unlockable character, while the game also features a licensed Garbage track.

In 2010, Shirley Manson donated two hand-decorated T-shirts to Binki Shapiro’s (of the band Little Joy) online charity auction “Crafts for a Cause” to raise money for victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The two T-shirts raised a total of $1522.00, which was donated to the Artists for Peace and Justice organisation.

In January 2012, Manson confirmed that work on her solo album had been cancelled, stating the album “[is] dead and buried. We had the funeral. It was sad and I cried a lot but it made such a beautiful corpse that we had an open casket.”

Manson has also given two tracks to Sky Ferreira; the 2012 single “Red Lips” and “I’m on Top” in 2013.

In January 2015, Manson headlined Pablove 6, the sixth-annual fundraiser for the Pablove Foundation. She made a special appearance with Chicago-based David Bowie tribute band Sons of the Silent Age, featuring Matt Walker and Chris Connelly.