Barakat was raised in the Maronite Christian town of Bsharré, Lebanon, where she lived until she moved to Beirut to study French Literature at the Lebanese University. She graduated in 1975. In 1975-76, she lived in Paris where she worked on a PhD, but decided to return home when the Lebanese Civil War started. During this period she worked as a teacher, translator and journalist. It is also during this war that all of her later works are set. In 1985, she published her first work a collection of short stories called Za’irat (Women Visitors). She moved to Paris in 1989 and has lived there to the present. Here she published a series of major works including Hajar al-Dahik (The Stone of Laughter, 1990) and Ahl el-Hawa (People of Love, 1993). In 2004, she visited the UK on the first Banipal Live UK tour.

Her first work Hajar al-Dahik (The Stone of Laughter), which is the first Arabic work to have a gay man as its main character, won the Al-Naqid prize. Her third novel, Harit al-miyah (The Tiller of Waters), won the Naghib Mahfus 2000 award. Her other works include Ahl el-Hawa (People of Love.