Sophia Domancich was born in Paris on January 25, 1957, and is a pianist and composer who has worked across written trio and quintet music, free improvisation, song settings and solo piano. She began playing the piano at six and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1968 to 1975, where she won first prizes in piano and in chamber music. Her first professional work was as an accompanist for singing and dance classes, including at the Paris Opera and the Théâtre de Caen. Her elder sister, Lydia Domancich, is also a jazz pianist.

In 1979 she met Steve Lacy, Bernard Lubat and Jean-Louis Chautemps, who introduced her to jazz and improvisation. In 1982 she formed a duo with Laurent Cugny and joined his big band Lumière, and she later played in the group Quoi d'neuf docteur ? Through a short collaboration with the group Anaïd, whose cassette album Vêtue de noir (1986) has her on piano with Hugh Hopper on bass, she met musicians of the English Canterbury scene: the drummer Pip Pyle, formerly of Gong, and the former Soft Machine members Elton Dean and Hugh Hopper. At the end of 1984 they formed Pip Pyle's Equip' Out, which also used Didier Malherbe on tenor saxophone and flute for a time. Its first album was recorded in Montpellier in October and November 1985 and issued in 1987, with Domancich on piano and synthesizer and the writer of three of its pieces, and a second, Up!, followed in 1990. She stayed with the group until 1991.

In 1986 she met the drummer Bernard Drouillet, who brought her into the Trio Davenport led by the double bassist Charles Calamel, and she also played in the quartet Hors-Série. With the bassist Paul Rogers and the drummers Bruno Tocanne and then Tony Levin she formed the Sophia Domancich Trio, which toured for eight years, playing London's Ronnie Scott's club in 1992. The trio's records on Gimini Music and Seventh Records include Funerals (recorded in July 1991, with the singer and bassist John Greaves singing one of her pieces), Rêve de singe (1993), L'Année des treize lunes (1995) and La Part des anges (1997). Greaves, formerly of Henry Cow, remained a regular partner: she is on his album Songs (1994), which features Robert Wyatt on some tracks, and in 2003 the two recorded The Trouble with Happiness with the cellist Vincent Courtois.

From 1997 to 2000 she was the pianist of the Orchestre national de jazz directed by Didier Levallet, and she appears on its albums ONJ Express, Sequences and Deep Feelings. In 1999 she became the first woman to receive the Prix Django-Reinhardt of the Académie du Jazz, given to the French musician of the year. That October she recorded the solo album Rêves familiers on a Bösendorfer piano. In 2000 she formed the quintet Pentacle with the drummer Simon Goubert, the trumpeter Jean-Luc Cappozzo, the double bassist Claude Tchamitchian and the euphonium player Michel Marre; its albums are Pentacle (Sketch, 2003), Triana Moods (Cristal Records, 2007) and En hiver comme au printemps (Sans Bruit, 2017). Pentacle was one of the titles chosen for 100 Jazz Titles, a book on French jazz produced by the French foreign and culture ministries in 2007.

The 2000s brought a run of different formats. In 2002 the electronic musician Fred Avril asked her to remix his piece « The Date », which led to her work with the sound designer Raphaël Marc on Lilienmund, a piece for piano and electronics inspired by a Schumann song and by works of Alban Berg and Qigang Chen. In 2003 she formed the Flowers Trio with the drummer Ramón López and the double bassist Joëlle Léandre, whose Radio France session of May 2004 became Flowers of Peace (Leo Records, 2005). In 2004 she began Soft Bounds with Goubert, Dean and Hopper, recorded live at Le Triton in June 2004; the group ended with Dean's death in 2006 and Hopper's in 2009. With Dean she also made the duo set Avant, recorded in Gorizia in April 2004. In 2006 she formed the trio DAG with the double bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel and Goubert, which recorded DAG, Upcoming Summer and Free 4, the last with the soprano saxophonist Dave Liebman as guest.

Her recordings since 2008 include two live sets at the Sunside club in Paris for Futura Marge: Washed Away with the bassist William Parker and the drummer Hamid Drake (July 2008) and Courtepointe with the bassist Mark Helias and the drummer Andrew Cyrille (July 2011). Snakes and Ladders (Cristal Records, 2010) is largely sung or spoken, with voices that include John Greaves, Himiko Paganotti, Robert Wyatt and Napoleon Maddox, and she plays keyboards, piano, Fender Rhodes and sampler on it. The quintet record Alice's Evidence (2016) was recorded live at La Dynamo in Pantin with the trombonist Ray Anderson, the alto saxophonist Géraldine Laurent, the double bassist Hélène Labarrière and the drummer Nasheet Waits. Two solo albums followed, So (Sans Bruit, 2017) and Le Grand Jour (PeeWee!, 2021) on piano and Fender Rhodes, then the duo with Goubert Twofold Head (2021), the group African Jazz Roots on Seetu (2023) and the saxophonist Matthieu Donarier's quartet album Coastline (2025). A recent album under her own name, Wishes (PeeWee!, November 2025), is a trio with Helias and the drummer Eric McPherson recorded in November 2024.

Domancich came to jazz from a classical conservatoire training, and she is credited as composer on most of her own records, so her improvising is built around written material. Her records move easily between formats: an acoustic piano trio, a quintet with brass, a duo with a drummer, solo piano and Fender Rhodes, song settings with singers, and electronic and sampler layers on Lilienmund and Snakes and Ladders. Her partners come from two directions, the English Canterbury scene (Pip Pyle, Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, John Greaves, Robert Wyatt) and the American and European free-improvising community (Joëlle Léandre, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Andrew Cyrille, Paul Dunmall). The saxophonist Steve Lacy was among the musicians who introduced her to improvised music in 1979. In France, the Prix Django-Reinhardt of 1999 and the inclusion of Pentacle in the 2007 book 100 Jazz Titles mark her standing; AllMusic lists her as a jazz pianist and as a member of Hatfield and the North and Pip Pyle's Equip' Out.