​​Germaine Ribière was born in Limoges on 13 April 1917 into a very devout Catholic family of porcelain makers. Her father warned her as early as April 1933 about the anti-Semitic persecutions in Germany. She began studying philosophy in Poitiers and, in 1940, joined the national secretariat of the Female Christian Student Youth in Paris.

She demonstrated on 11 November at Place de l’Étoile in Paris with students who were prevented from returning home for Christmas. On 14 May 1941, she witnessed the arrest of Jews in the Marais. In the summer of 1941, she identified reliable people willing to act with her to initiate a network. She interrupted her studies in November 1941 to commit to the Resistance. She became a close collaborator of Father Pierre Chaillet, leader of the Cahiers du Témoignage Chrétien journal and the Amitié Chrétienne organization.

During the roundups in the free zone—Haute-Vienne, Creuse, and Indre—on 26 August and in September 1942, Germaine Ribière and Pastor Chaudier of Limoges found hiding places in non-Jewish families for children from the Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) shelters. She took advantage of the creation of a social service at the Nexon camp (Haute-Vienne) by Secours National to bring some comfort to the internees.

On 29 August 1942, she accompanied deportees on a train from the Nexon camp to Vierzon. She brought back valuable information about the family members the deportees had left behind. As head nurse at the Limoges nursery from 1941 to May 1944, she made regular visits to the places where she hid children. She organized the transport and concealment of Jewish children threatened with deportation on a national and even international scale (Switzerland, Spain, or the United States). She helped convoys cross the demarcation line, often disguising herself as a nurse.

She was one of the first women in France to be named Righteous Among the Nations in 1967, a title awarded by the State of Israel through Yad Vashem. After the war, Germaine Ribière resumed her studies to become a social worker.