Lía Correa Morales grew up in an artistic and intellectual environment. Her father, Lucio Correa Morales (1852–1923), was a well-known Argentine sculptor, and her mother, Elina González Acha (1861–1942), one of the few nineteenth-century women artists whose work was shown in prestigious institutions such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, was also a geographer and writer. Their daughter took to the arts at an early age. Between 1912 and 1915 she used a pseudonym to submit several pieces to the Salón Nacional, notably the oil painting Torso (1913), a women seen from behind, acquired by the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in the same year, at a time when nude paintings by women artists were highly unusual.
In 1917 she got married and moved to Patagonia. Two years later, after the death of her husband, she returned to Buenos Aires and resumed her work as an artist.
In 1926–1930 she continued her training in Europe, where she worked closely with Rogelio Yrurtia (1879–1950), a former disciple of her father who became one of her main teachers. She married him in 1936. While visiting Germany she spent time with Julia Wernicke (1860–1932), a friend of her mother who was an animal painter. Among her other teachers were Alfredo Torcelli (1876–1959), Pedro Zonza Briano (1886–1941), Pompeyo Boggio (1880–1938) and Carlos Ripamonte (1874–1968). In Paris she made a series of portraits of women, including Jacky, la bailarina [Jacky, the dancer, 1928].

She won various awards and took part in exhibitions and salons in Argentina and abroad, including the French Salón de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in 1928 and 1929. In 1928 she won the second prize for painting at the Salón Nacional de Buenos Aires with Retrato de mujer [Portrait of a woman], and in 1934 was invited to join the salon’s jury, becoming its first woman member. Between 1913 and 1941, she also taught drawing and painting.

After the death of R. Yrurtia, she ran the Museo Casa de Yrurtia, becoming one of the first women to head an Argentine fine arts museum. This meant largely abandoning her career as a painter, although she made a few occasional works. In 1968, she was admitted as a full member to the Colegio de Museólogos.

L. Correa Morales’ oil self-portrait Despertar [Awakening, 1935] was the subject of an essay by Georgina Gluzman, “Reflexiones sobre la actuación y obra de Lía Correa Morales en el Museo Yrurtia” [Reflections on the role and work of Lía Correa Morales at the Museo Yrurtia, 2012], which argued that this artist “subverted the genres of the self-portrait and the nude by adopting the role of the model herself”. She made many monotypes and nude study drawings, becoming a distinguished master of this subject. Although she also produced some portraits of children and family members, her main interests were female models, including dancers, and medicinal plants.

Most of her legacy is in the Museo Casa de Yrurtia, although some of her work is also held by other Argentine museums.