Born in 1950 in Villahermosa, Mexico, Andrade moved to Mexico City when she was eighteen to study theater, but in 1974 she turned toward photography after becoming involved in the Photographic Club of Mexico. In 1976 and 1977 she studied photography at the Vial Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, under the tutelage of Nathan Lyons (1930-2016). During her stay in the United States, Andrade became familiar with the work of street photographers such as Walker Evans (1903-1975), Robert Frank (1924) and Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) and was influenced by her.

Upon her return to Mexico, she began documenting daily life and popular culture on the streets of Mexico City. For over twenty-five years. Andrade generated black and white images using analog cameras, but in the early 2000s she began exploring color in digital photography, a practice she continues today. Andrade has taught since 1992 at the Nacho López School of Photography, at the Image Center in Mexico City and at the Technological Institute of Monterrey, Mexico.

Among other recognitions, she has received the Guggenheim Scholarship for Artistic Creation in 2004, as well as scholarships from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts of Mexico to finance his publications and projects in 1993, 1997, 2000 and 2003. She has participated in the 1st Biennial of Havana (1984), Superreal: Alternative Realities in Photography and Video (2013) at El Museo del Barrio in New York, and Urbes Mutantes: Latin American Photography, 1944-2013 (2014) at the International Center of Photography in New York and in Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960 - 1985; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2017); Brooklyn Museum(2018).

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Her work is part of important public and private collections, including: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, USA; Kyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Hokuto, Japan; Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City, Mexico; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA;  Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, USA; El Barrio Museum, New York, USA; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, USA; Hammer Museum, USC, Los Angeles, CA, USA.