Inah Canabarro Lucas was born in Sao Francisco de Assis, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil on 8 June 1908, to parents Joao Antonio Lucas and Mariana Canabarro Lucas. While she has claimed to have been born on 27 May 1908, research found that she was likely born 11 days later. As a child, she was so skinny that many people didn’t think she would survive childhood. She is the great-granddaughter of General David Canabarro. Her father died in combat in 1923.

Canabarro Lucas studied at the Santa Teresa de Jesus boarding school in Santana do Livramento, Rio Grande do Sul. Around 1928, she moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, where she became a nun. In 1930, she returned to Brazil to teach Portuguese and mathematics at a school in Tijuca, a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. In the early 1940s, she moved back to Santana do Livramento where she worked as a teacher.

Canabarro Lucas currently lives in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, at the age of 115. At the age of 110, she began having some mobility difficulties and had to start using a walker. On 25 January 2021, at the age of 112, she received her first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, making her one of the oldest people to receive the vaccine. She credits her longevity to God.

In October 2022, Canabarro Lucas contracted COVID-19 while she was hospitalized, but was later able to recover from the disease in November, making her one of the oldest known survivors of the disease.