Valeria de los Ríos was born in the city of Santiago de Chile in 1975, the daughter of Benito Enrique de los Ríos Belmar and Rosa María Eliana Escobar Cáceres.

She graduated as a Journalist and Bachelor of Social Information at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in 1998 and as a Bachelor of Aesthetics at the same university that same year. Subsequently, she obtained her Master's Degree from Cornell University, Ithaca, in 2003, to later receive a Doctor of Philosophy in Romance Studies (Hispanic American Literature and Visual Studies) in the same house of studies. She currently works as an associate professor at the Institute of Aesthetics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is part of the Santiago Visual Archive project team, as well as an associate researcher at the University of Santiago de Chile.