Michel Petrucciani was born on December 28, 1962, in Orange, in the Vaucluse, and grew up in nearby Montélimar in a musical family of Neapolitan descent. His father, Tony, and his brother Philippe played guitar and his brother Louis played bass. He was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic bone disease that left him very short and caused his bones to fracture more than a hundred times before adolescence; he lived with pain for the rest of his life. As a small child he saw Duke Ellington on television and decided he wanted to be a pianist. He began classical piano at four, and around the age of ten he started listening to Bill Evans, whose harmonies and lyricism stayed with him for good. He gave his first professional concert at thirteen.

At fifteen he was taken to Paris by the drummer Aldo Romano, who had to talk his protective father into letting him go. In the city he played with Kenny Clarke from 1977 and with Clark Terry in 1978; his breakthrough came at the Cliousclat jazz festival, where Terry needed a pianist and the festival audience was astonished by the carried-in teenager's command of the instrument. He began recording for the small French label Owl, run by Jean-Jacques Pussiau, with Flash (1980) and a self-titled album (1981), and toured France in a duo with Lee Konitz in 1980; a live Paris recording of the pair from 1982 was issued as Toot Sweet.

In 1982 he visited the saxophonist Charles Lloyd in California. Lloyd had largely stopped playing, and he was so taken with the young pianist that he agreed to return to touring. Their quartet toured the American West Coast and then internationally, and recordings from the association include Montreux 82 (Elektra Musician, 1983), A Night in Copenhagen (Blue Note, 1985) and the film-and-album One Night with Blue Note, taped at New York's Town Hall on February 22, 1985, with Lloyd carrying Petrucciani to the stool. Petrucciani settled in New York in 1984 and lived there for the rest of his life. His first American albums were the solo set 100 Hearts (recorded 1983, issued by Concord in 1984) and a trio concert recorded at the Village Vanguard on March 16, 1984, with bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Eliot Zigmund, issued as the double album Live at the Village Vanguard (Concord, 1985).

A long run for Blue Note began with Pianism (1986), his first album recorded under a Blue Note contract, a trio date recorded in December 1985 at RCA Studio C with bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Eliot Zigmund. In 1986 he was recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival with guitarist Jim Hall and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, a trio meeting released in 1987 as Power of Three. Michel Plays Petrucciani (1988), Music (1989), Playground (1991) and Promenade with Duke (1993) followed, along with The Manhattan Project (1990), a band album recorded live in front of an audience in 1989 with Shorter, bassist Stanley Clarke, drummer Lenny White and keyboardists Gil Goldstein and Pete Levin. He was also the pianist on Joe Lovano's quartet album From the Soul (1992). He asked his agent in early 1993 to cancel his trio dates for a year so that he could play only solo recitals, an experience he said taught him a great deal about the piano. The French Victoires du Jazz honored him repeatedly: as musician of the year in 1988 and 1990, and for Playground in 1992 and Promenade with Duke in 1994.

From 1994 his studio albums appeared on Dreyfus Jazz, beginning with Marvellous (1994). He made two duo albums with the organist Eddy Louiss, Conférence de Presse (1994) and a second volume (1995), and the pair took the 1995 Victoires du Jazz award for instrumental album of the year; a quartet record with the violinist Stéphane Grappelli, bassist George Mraz and drummer Roy Haynes, Flamingo, recorded in 1995 and released in 1996; and the sextet album Both Worlds (1997), whose front line included trumpeter Flavio Boltro and saxophonist Stefano Di Battista. In 1997 he toured with drummer Steve Gadd and bassist Anthony Jackson, a tour documented on the posthumous Trio in Tokyo (1999), and he also issued the solo concert recording Solo Live in Germany (1998).

The pace of his later years was punishing. He played more than a hundred concerts a year, 140 of them in 1998, grew too weak for crutches and used a wheelchair, and was recording and giving interviews constantly. A week before his death he stayed up all night celebrating the new year with friends. He passed away in New York City on January 6, 1999, a week after his thirty-sixth birthday, of a pulmonary infection, and is buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, close to the grave of Frédéric Chopin. Paris named a square in the 18th arrondissement for him, and live and archival recordings have continued to appear, among them Solo in Denmark (2022), The Montreux Years (2023) and Kuumbwa (2026), a 1987 Santa Cruz concert with Dave Holland and Eliot Zigmund.

Petrucciani is most often compared with Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett for his lyricism and with Oscar Peterson for his virtuosity. Evans was the formative influence, though Petrucciani lacked his cerebral approach and spent little time reharmonizing or arranging; he favored a firm, clearly articulated melodic line and sometimes paused at the peak of a phrase before descending. Commentators also noted the independence of his hands and his speed, and he wrote many themes with a Brazilian flavor, such as "Brazilian Like". He treated solo piano as the proving ground of the instrument and made it a recurring part of his recorded work. Some critics found his playing overly showy or too accessible, while others heard in it an uncommonly joyful, forthright musician; Wayne Shorter remarked that he never heard him complain about anything. Among later musicians who have paid tribute are the keyboardist Laurent Coulondre, whose Michel on My Mind (2019) marked the twentieth anniversary of his death, and the pianist Antonio Faraò, whose 2024 album Tributes takes on the styles of Petrucciani and other pianists.