Chizuku Inoue was exposed to the Japanese woodcut tradition while studying with Kitaoka Fumio. She later married into the famous Yoshida family, marrying Hiroshi Yoshida's son, Hodaka Yoshida, also a noted printmaker.
Chizuku is best known for her color woodcut of butterflies. These prints proved to be very popular, and commissions for new versions, in both large and small sizes, occupied her for many years. Her earlier works were abstract and often three-dimensional.
In an interview in 2000, she acknowledged the difficulty of escaping one’s own success, admitting that she continued to make butterfly prints long after she had grown tired of the subject simply because they sold so well.
The largest collection of her works can be found in the Yokohama Museum of Art, with works also in the British Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, and the Tokyo International Museum of Modern Art.