Beginning her first viola da gamba lessons at the age of five with Christine Plubeau, Lucile Boulanger continued her studies with Ariane Maurette, Jérôme Hantaï, and finally Christophe Coin at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMD). She has won many prizes at prestigious international competitions, such as the Bach-Abel Competition in Köthen, the Concorso della Società Umanitaria in Milan, and the Musica Antiqua Competition in Bruges.

Greatly in demand as a chamber music artist, she has appeared and also recorded with Philippe Pierlot, François Lazarevitch, Justin Taylor, Alice Piérot, l’Achéron (the ensemble directed by François Joubert-Caillet) and many others. She also regularly performs with larger ensembles such as Pygmalion (Raphaël Pichon), Correspondances (Sébastien Daucé), Vox Luminis (Lionel Meunier) and Les Epopées (Stéphane Fuget).

She gives frequent solo recitals, in France and elsewhere. Her two duo recordings for the Alpha label with Arnaud de Pasquale at the keyboard (a Bach Sonata album in 2012, and works by C.P.E Bach and Graun in 2015) have been widely acclaimed.

In 2018 her solo album on Harmonia Mundi, devoted to Forqueray and his passion for the Italian violin sonata, prompted one reviewer to write: ’sometimes it is the sheer energy that bowls you over, sometimes a caress that makes you tremble, or a naked display of emotion that suddenly overwhelms you – but there is also an equal amount of precision and consistency throughout.’ BBC Music Magazine’s summed up the Forqueray CD with the word ‘irresistible’, comparing its sense of freedom in performance to that of Jacqueline du Pré.