Born into a non-practicing Jewish family, Rose is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. She is a graduate of St Hilda's College, Oxford and gained her higher degree (mâitrise) from the Sorbonne and her doctorate from the University of London.
Her Albertine, a novel from 2001, is a feminist variation on Marcel Proust's Ŕ la recherche du temps perdu.
Rose is a regular broadcaster on and contributor to the London Review of Books.
Rose is critical of Zionism, describing it as "[having] been traumatic for the Jews as well as the Palestinians." In 2005, writing for the online political magazine Open Democracy, she called for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.