Maren-Kea Freese was born on April 24, 1960, in Hanover and grew up in Hamburg, Curaçao, Ingolstadt, and Cologne. She studied film studies, media studies, and German literature at the Free University of Berlin, graduating in 1989. During her studies, she created several short films on Super 8 and video - some of them award-winning - handling not only directing but also writing, cinematography, and editing. Starting in 1986, she also worked in script and continuity on various productions and was an assistant director and editorial assistant for the ZDF television series "Literatur und Kunst". She later gained additional experience as an assistant director at the Aachen City Theater under Fritz Matthiae, and subsequently with George Tabori and Rosa von Praunheim.

In 1990, Freese was accepted to the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (dffb), where her instructors included Béla Tarr. Her feature debut came with her graduation film "Zoe" (1999), about a rebellious woman in her mid-twenties living without a permanent home, trying to get by in Berlin as a DJ. "Zoe" earned her the Förderpreis Deutscher Film (German Film Promotion Prize) for Best Direction at the 1999 Munich Film Festival. The film was shown at numerous festivals, including the Berlinale Forum in 2000 and the Moscow International Film Festival.

Her second feature film, the unconventional mother-daughter story "Was ich von ihr weiß" (2005), starring Julia Richter and Alice Dwyer, premiered at the Munich Film Festival in 2006. In the years that followed, Freese produced several documentary works for radio and television, including "Mein Prinz kommt aus Amerika" (2012, co-directed with Silvia Kaiser), about a woman who reunites with the son she gave up for adoption more than 30 years earlier.

In 2023, Freese began production on her third feature film: "Wilma will mehr", a project that had been in development for many years. The story follows a woman in her mid-forties from the Lausitz region (Fritzi Haberlandt) who leaves her unfaithful husband on a whim and sets out to reinvent her life. The film premiered in May 2025 at the Filmkunstfest Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and went on to win the Audience Award at the 2025 Neiße Film Festival. It was released in German cinemas in July 2025.