Carmen L. Browne was born in Calumet, Michigan on March 29, 1895 to John D. Browne and Anna Zimmerman Browne. She studied at the Art Instituite of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York. In 1930 she was living and working out of the American Women’s Association Club Hotel, New York, NY. In 1945 she married Jesse Augustus Luckner and they moved to Monroe. Connecticut.

Browne worked as a commercial artist creating illustrations for books and greeting cards for the P. F. Volland Company. Her illustrations were described as "light and dainty", "difficult to surpass in sheer loveliness", "apt pictures .. to please the wee ones", "assisting the text admirably, designed as they are to delight the child's heart," and as making "appropriate" gift books for "little friends and relatives. She also designed wallpaper patterns for children, and invented an educational doll apparatus, "to associate with a doll educational matter which is commonly presented in unattractive, formal lessons." Her lithographs, some of which were shown at the Ninth International Print Makers' Exhibition in 1928, were described as "amusing and very expert".

A 1927 New York Times review of a group show at the National Art Club described a Browne image of a girl pulling weeds as being "as true to nature as Millet tried to make his peasant girls," and a Browne nude as, "a fine abstraction" that "removes all superfluous details and gives a chance for beautiful rhythm of movement."

Carmen Brown Luckner died in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on April 11, 1992 at age 97.